Getting a kid to stay in his room?

[verovladamir]

Here's the situation: 
DH snores like mad. Because of this, I sleep withe ear plugs in. If I don't, I either can't sleep or I have to go sleep on the couch, where I also can't sleep (and I can sometimes still hear him snoring). 

Lately, Nathan has not been sleeping well. I hear him jumping around in his room well after bed time and he gets up insanely early. I have tried several things to correct this. Later bedtimes, taking away toys if he is playing with them after bedtime, cutting out naps, room darkening curtains. None of it matters. He is up right now and it's not even light out yet. He will be insanely crabby all day. We moved him into Eleanor's room last night. I made his room into a playroom. I felt that part of the sleep problem was that he was up playing with toys rather than sleeping.

But I'm also noticing things out of place around the house. The new playroom that I set up last night after he went to bed had toys out. This means that at some point before he came and woke me up at 6:20am he was up and playing around the house. I really don't like that. First because it means I don't know what he was doing (the other day I found out he was eating ovaltine powder before we got up) and I worry he could hurt himself, and secondly because it means I can't gauge how much sleep he is actually getting. He comes and wakes us up really early (by our standards as a 2nd shift family), but if he's up even before that... DH of course sleeps through all of this, so I feel like it's all on me. But again, if I don't wear earplugs then I don't sleep at all....

I've thought about putting one of those doorknob things on his room so he can't get out until we are ready for him, but he sometimes has to use the bathroom during the night, so I don't want to prevent him from doing that. I also don't want him in his room screaming for us to come and get him and waking Eleanor up in the process. She really likes her sleep....

I just really need suggestions here. We are going on several months of this and I'm totally at a loss....

[verovladamir]

Jan 26, 2015 7:51:33 GMT -5 trichie5 said:

Can you put a gate over the door? I hate to suggest this because you still want to allow him bathroom access. What about a hook and eye latch on the playroom and a gate (or 2 stacked) to block him in the sleeping area but still giving bathroom access?

The bedroom is right off the living room. You have to go through the living room to get to the hallway that has the bathroom, which is also right across from the playroom. I could definitely close off the playroom, but if I allow him access to the bathroom then he can still get to the rest of the house because he would have to go through it to get to the bathroom. 

I'm thinking that putting a gate up sounds better and better. He used to stay in there all night. He would get up around 8 to go to the bathroom. It seems like since maybe.... November? that it's been really bad. Like since we came back from FL he's been a terrible sleeper. 

[verovladamir]

The living room and breakfast nook (where the food is) are one big open area, no door ways or anything, so it would be impossible to block off. And his room is right off of there, so he has to go through the living room to get to the bathroom. I will think about putting snacks and stuff away though. He doesn't know how to use the TV yet and any other electronics have pass codes on them so he can't use them without our okay. He seems to just get into random stuff. I left a box in the playroom from the shelving unit I set up and he pulled that apart. Like WTF? It's like he is just out to destroy.

[crimsonandclover]

Have you tried a Gro Clock? They're not cheap, but we have found them to be worth the money for DD1. I mean, it's hard for kids to know when it's ok to get up. Especially here, where the sky doesn't start to get light until about 8am in the depth of winter or in the summer when it's already light at 4:30 am. Obviously she can't use that as a judge for when to get up. So with the Gro Clock, we set the time for when she can get up, and then she can look at it and know it's ok (or not).
It worked wonders when we first started using it when she was 2.5.

However, it stopped working so well for naps after a while, so we started locking her in her room for naps. We put a little potty chair in her room so the bathroom's not an issue. She uses it regularly. I remember that you had lots of bathroom issues, though, and don't know if you would want to risk that. I can totally see a toddler getting ticked off that the door won't open and tossing the full potty around in a fit of rage. Thankfully (knock on wood - hard), DD1 has never done that, so the solution works for us.

[verovladamir]

I don't think he would throw the potty. And he's been accident free for months now so I don't worry too much about that. Now it's more that he will wake the other one up with his shouting. I will look into the gro clock though. I've heard about them in the past but I forgot about that. Something like that might be a good/gentle option.

[verovladamir]

Looked on Amazon, and it's like $80! On their website it would only be about $35, but I would have to ship it from the UK.

[crimsonandclover]

I know. We paid about $70 for ours. Honestly, I would say it was worth it for us and we will get another for DD2 when she's a bit older.
Have you looked on ebay? There are also other brands with similar concepts. We got the Gro Clock because of the star countdown it does (starts with about 10 stars and they slowly disappear so the kid can judge whether it's a long time until they can get up or not), but there are other kinds that only have the sleep/wake feature.

[verovladamir]

I looked at some similar stuff. My main issue with the other ones are that they play music on a timer. I don't mind the soft music, but the timer is an issue. DS had a crib aquarium and he would wake up every time the music went of and push the button again. We finally just took it away last time the batteries died. Even last night he kept pushing the button on the one in DD's room. I bought them a white noise machine today (that stays on) in order to prevent that.
I just can't stomach $70 for a clock....

[dc2london]

We had an ok-to-wake clock that was adorable but DS threw it and broke it
We only paid about $35 for ours though. And it didn't play any music. It just showed a smiley face and turned green if it was ok to get up, and showed a sleepy face and was red if it wasn't ok to get up. If it was close to wake-up time, it would glow yellow.

[verovladamir]

Well, I did a few things.
1) I bought a white noise machine. Specifically, this one, and it seems to have worked well for both nap and bedtime last night. Neither child woke up in the middle of the night. It also doesn't have a timer so we don't have to worry about it needing to be turned back on.
2) It turns out Eleanor is a very sound sleeper. Nathan can leave her room without waking her up at all, so that's good. He got up from nap about an hour before she did yesterday, and woke up before her this morning. He left the room quietly and she stayed asleep.
3) He slept almost an hour later this morning! I'm hoping that continues. We did notice that he had clearly been in the playroom playing for a little while before we got up though. We've decided that we are going to put one of those doorknob covers on the outside of the playroom door and close it before we go to bed so he can't get up and play.

Hopefully it works out. He's been a terrible sleeper since the day we brought him home. I just want some rest!