Is your child climbing out of their crib?

Is your child starting to climb out of their crib or getting their legs stuck in the crib all the time?

If so, try crib tents. They are a life-saver. It is a little tent that fits inside the crib. It’s made of breathable material and it prevents your child from climbing out or getting their legs stuck!

Crib tents

Crib tents allow children to keep sleeping in their cribs even when they get to the point where they can climb out. And more importantly, they allow the parents to keep getting a full night’s sleep!

One of my older and more experienced mom friends told me about these when my autistic son was about 2 years old. It saved my life!! Because my son was speech delayed, we used this crib for awhile – like as long as we possibly could. 🙂 And it helped us get a lot more sleep!

Here is what it looks like:

The crib tent fits snuggly inside a crib and has a zipper that only opens from the outside so that your child can’t unzip themselves.

You can get a crib tent on Amazon. This particular one I have been very happy with.

Portraying the Right Attitude about Crib Tents

If the parents portray the right attitude about it (“You get to sleep in a tent! Awesome!”), then the child has no need to feel like they are trapped. The material is breathable and quite transparent.

When I first started using the crib tent with my daughter recently, she had a look on her face of pure horror. But I told her excitedly: “This is such a cool tent! You get to sleep in it! I love you.” It helped when he older brother came home and wanted to get in the tent too during our afternoon playtime. And since older brother was in the tent, she suddenly wanted to get in it too!

We start using a crib tent with our kids when they are about 21 months -2 years old. My daughter is really good at putting herself to sleep, so we just put her in the tent after we do our bedtime routine. However, my autistic son was considerably more difficult. If they are an older toddler or an autistic child who has trouble falling asleep on their own, one tip is to put the kids down in the tent drowsy but not quite asleep. So for us, this means we laid down with the toddler on the floor or on a mattress and sing to them for about 15 minutes until they are looking sleepy. Then when they look sleepy and about to dose off, we put them in the tent. That way their last waking memories are of the tent (not us). That helps them to develop good self soothing skills and be able to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up during the night.

Another option: the PeaPod Tent

Another option is to use a little PeaPod tent like this:

We have used this tent on trips when we can’t bring our crib tent with us. It can be folded up into a nice little bag perfect for trips!

We have also used the peapod tent at home just for nightly sleeping when it seemed like my autistic son would wake up in the middle of the night and just want to bounce up and down in his crib tent for hours. The peapod tent is nice, but it is not as sturdy as a crib tent and so big toddlers could potentially roll around in it. There were several nights when we noticed my son had rolled around a little bit before we went back to sleep in the middle of the night. But for non-autistic toddlers, the peapod tent can be a great option. I know families that use the peapod tent all the time with their toddlers and their kids love it!

I also bought the peapod tent on Amazon. There are lots of different colors to choose from.

I hope you parents enjoy some better sleep! Let me know in the comments how it is going for you.