Sleep Training a Toddler

And we found success. The cold turkey cry it out method sucked with Aubrey when he was a baby, but he was an amazing sleeper because we stuck with it. Now, so many years later, we caved into letting him sleep in our bed while I was pregnant. It started with the move and him being in a new room. We decided then to move the queen bed into his room so that Rob could get some sleep. I was having pregnancy sleep issues, and then when Poppy came, we were up all night with her reflux. So, the queen bed made a casual co-sleep with him, into a habit that we were finding it hard to break. Rob works very early mornings so it wasn't even a thing we could get on top of because we didn't want to interfere with Rob's little sleep that he did get. We were in a hard spot. So to do a quick fix, we moved the old twin bed to the bottom of our bed. Aubrey would sleep there and we would have enough room to sleep. The problem was, Poppy would then wake him up. We didn't know what to do.Friday, we went to the doctors, for Poppy's 4 month needles and Aubrey's flu shot. I had stated to her our sleeping problems and that we didn't know what to do. His eyes were puffy 24/7 and that horrible 3 year old temper was becoming worse and worse. She stated point blank that we needed to lock the door so that his mind knows during his sleep to stay asleep because he wont be able to get out anyways. In her words, he needed tough love or will walk all over us.So, Saturday night, we attached one of those child locks to the doorknob inside his room. We were nervous but we knew we had to do something. We also moved his twin back in and put the queen into Poppy's room. We stopped drinking anything after dinner and now screen time is over 30 mins prior to bed while we read books together. It has been 5 nights now and each night, he is asleep until 7am in his own bed. It's working! HALLELUJAH!Ps. the photos above are from our Halloween celebrations. Trying to paint a 3 year old's face is probably the hardest thing ever!