Cot jumping can be a frustrating challenge for parents. If your toddler is constantly climbing out of their cot, bedtime can quickly turn into a battle. As a sleep consultant, I’ve helped countless families navigate this tricky phase with safe and effective solutions.
There are Two Types of Cot Jumping
There are two types of cot jumping: dangerous cot jumping and cot jumping for fun. It’s important to distinguish between them because the approach to managing each is different.
1. Dangerous Cot Jumping
This happens when your toddler attempts to climb out in a way that puts them at risk of injury. For example jumping headfirst or falling awkwardly. If your child is showing signs of dangerous cot jumping or has already fallen, safety should be your top priority. In this case, transitioning to a toddler bed or a low single bed is often the best solution to prevent serious accidents.
2. Cot Jumping for Fun
This is where your toddler climbs in and out of their cot effortlessly, turning it into a game rather than a safety risk. While this behaviour isn’t immediately dangerous, it can become frustrating as bedtime turns into a never-ending cycle of putting them back into their cot.
Managing Dangerous Cot Jumping
If your toddler is attempting to climb out of their cot in a way that poses a serious safety risk, it’s essential to take immediate action to prevent injury. Dangerous cot jumping can lead to serious accidents. In these situations, the best course of action is usually transitioning to a toddler bed or floor bed.
Here are a few key steps to consider when transitioning for safety:
- Choose a bed with low or no rails to minimise the risk of falls.
- Consider a floor bed to reduce the height from which your toddler can fall.
- Toddler-proof the room by securing furniture and removing sharp objects.
Not sure where to start with transitioning to a toddler bed? Check out my guide on Transitioning to a Toddler Bed for tips and strategies.
Managing Cot Jumping for Fun
When toddlers jump out of their cot for fun, they are usually seeking attention. Even if the response involves being told off, they still receive your full focus. At this stage, toddlers are highly attuned to your reactions and quickly learn that this behavior gets them noticed. I recently spoke with a client who was dealing with this scenario every nap time. She’d put her toddler in the cot, leave the room, and moments later, the child would climb out and run to the door. After placing her back in the cot, she would leave again, and the cycle would repeat until she finally gave up and decided to move on with the day.
It might seem like a quick fix to move your toddler to a bed, but that often doesn’t resolve the issue. It actually makes things worse. Once they’re in a bed, there are no barriers to keep them contained. Instead of jumping out of the cot, they’ll simply climb out of bed and come running to you. Moving them to a bed without addressing the cause of the behaviour just makes it easier for them to repeat the cycle. The root cause which we need to address is that this behaviour gets them attention.
The Cot Jumping Solution
The key here is to ignore the behaviour. The American Academy of Paediatrics suggest that children will engage in attention-seeking behaviours because they learn that it prompts a response, whether it’s positive or negative. Ultimately, we need to stop the reinforcement of this behaviour.
Here’s what I recommended to my client:
- Make a cosy area somewhere within in the room, for example with blankets, that could be a suitable sleeping option.
- Put your toddler in the cot one time and leave the room. If they jump out, that is where they stay.
- If it’s a nap issue, start calling it quiet time. This takes the pressure off of the idea to sleep. You can tell them that they’re in here for an hour, either they can stay in their cot or get out but you’re in here for quiet time.
- Give them a chance to fall asleep in their cosy area if they do jump out of the cot.
- If you want to, when you go to bed, if you see that they are there, you can pick them up and move them back to the cot if you want to. You may provoke the game. As they may realise they’ve been moved, jump out of the cot and the game begins. If that happens, ignore it. Leave them be. They can sleep in the cosy area tonight.
Make it Boring
To make quiet time more effective, it’s important to remove any distractions from the room. Avoid leaving toys around that could tempt your toddler to get out of the cot. If there are any objects in the room that could be dangerous, such as things that they might try to climb on, make sure to remove those too. The goal is to create a space that’s as unappealing as possible for getting out of the cot.
At night, some toddlers may attempt to turn on the light. To prevent this, you could try covering the light switch with duct tape or removing the lightbulb entirely. The key is to make the environment as uninteresting as possible. We want your toddler to find it boring to leave their cot, and if they choose to sleep in a less comfortable spot, like on a small nest of blankets on the floor, that’s okay. This is a learning process. Over time, your child will realise that if they climb out of their cot, they don’t get a trip back. They’ll have to settle for sleeping on the floor, which isn’t as comfy as their cot, and the behaviour will stop.
By staying consistent and calm, your toddler will eventually learn that jumping out of the cot no longer gets attention, and the behaviour will subside. Finally, if you’re in any scenario with your child where you feel like a game is being played even though you’re not enjoying it and they might not actually even be enjoying it either, you’ve got to stop what you’re doing. That’s the only way to end the game and stop the behaviour.
