Lots of parents wonder how to get their kids to transition from a crib to a toddler bed. It usually happens around the age of two, but sometimes a bit later.

I’m going to provide a series of tips to help you get your toddler adjusted to a bed rather than a crib. But before I do, let’s talk about why your toddler might resist this transition. It’s pretty simple. People tend to resist change. Once we are comfortable with something the way it is, we don’t like to change it. Toddler behavior tends to align with this basic rule of life.

Change will be accepted by a person when:

1. The new action / behavior is clearly superior;
2. The old behavior / action is unavailable and the new one is the best available option;
3. Change is forced upon them until it becomes a new habit.

Obviously option #1 is the best approach to use with children because it creates no disruption. It’s like offering a child a chocolate cookie for dessert instead of a stick of celery. They will go for it instantly with no hesitation. To get a toddler into a toddler bed, your goal should be to associate lots of positive attributes to the bed.

In the case of switching to a toddler bed, Options 2 and 3 on the above list are essentially the same. You are taking away choice (i.e. you are taking away the crib) and the next best solution is the toddler bed. Specifically, you are taking away the crib without getting agreement from your child. This can cause your child to be upset, but eventually he or she will get over it and the toddler bed becomes a new pattern.

So how can parents get toddlers to willingly switch to a toddler bed? Here are a bunch of ideas for you to try out:

• Go shopping with your toddler. If you can get him to pick out his own bed, chances are that he will pick something he likes (people rarely pick stuff that they hate, right?). This will immediately boost your chances of getting your toddler to actually enjoy sleeping in the toddler bed.
• Setup the toddler bed in your child’s room. Leave it there for a week or more before you take away the crib. If space is an issue, maybe this isn’t something you can do, but if you put the bed there, the child will start to see it as normal. Just introduce it as another piece of furniture and perhaps don’t even mention that you’ll be taking the crib away. If you get huge resistance and are unable to get your child to willingly change to the new bed, you may just have to remove the crib by surprise.
• Play quiet games on the new bed with your toddler. Those toddler wooden puzzles and shape matching games are great things to do on the new bed together. Read books together. Snuggle together and tickle your toddler into laughter. This will ‘anchor’ positive feelings to the new bed very quickly. Anchoring is something I teach in my Talking to Toddlers Audio Course, which all parents should consider for dealing with difficult toddlers.
• Actually tell your toddler that they have a choice as to where they will sleep at night (or at nap time). Then make the bed appealing by offering a “big boy/girl pillow” for when they are in the new bed. Or simply create a reward scenario where the toddler gets stickers for having a nap in the new bed. At this point it should be offered as a choice, not a forced issue. You want to get your toddler to decide, on his or her own, to sleep in this new bed.

If these tricks still don’t work, then you have to resort to taking away the option of a crib altogether. But remember – you don’t need to rush this! You might bring on a screaming fit if your child suddenly finds his crib gone, and a toddler bed in its place. That’s why I think introducing the bed by the crib side makes for an easier transition.

When and if you have to take away the crib, I highly recommend the “it’s broken” excuse. With our first daughter, we were not only moving her into a big girl bed, but also into a new bedroom! We told her the crib was broken. We took the mattress out and put it on the floor of her new room beside her new bed. We let her choose where to sleep. She picked the mattress on the floor, but was curious about the new bed. We let her play on the new bed and lie down on it if she felt like it. We read books together on the new bed. Whenever she asked about her crib we told her it was broken. No arguments.

Within 2 weeks she was sleeping in her new bed. The clincher was this: we took her to the pet store and showed her all of the fish. We bought a small aquarium kit with some pretty (but cheap) tropical fish. We placed the aquarium on her dresser, which could only be seen if she lied in her new bed, not from the mattress on the floor. We cuddled on the new bed at night with the aquarium light on. She loved watching the fish as she fell asleep. It worked perfectly.

If you want to be able to understand how to solve these kinds of problems, check out the Talking To Toddlers Audio Course.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

Hey, I'm Chris Thompson. I help stressed-out parents deal with toddlers. Grab the free lesson I've prepared for you. You'll love it. Email:

I’m writing this post during the week between Christmas and New Years, with no access to the Internet, so it will be published when I get home. Every year at this time, our family goes up north to my in-law’s cottage on a small lake. It’s a really great cottage to vacation at, and I’m lucky to have such great in-laws who share this little slice of heaven with us pretty much as often as we like.

You know those days when the weather is really crappy and you feel “stuck in the house” and totally bored? Your kids get in a bad mood, and the whole family just interacts poorly? Imagine being up here at the cottage and doing that for a week solid. It would drive you totally nuts. So how do you prevent it? It’s easy … get outside a lot! I mean ever single day, hopefully twice per day, for at least an hour at a time.

When we go outside we do all kinds of things. If the weather has been cold enough for long enough, then the lake is safe to walk on and we can walk all around the lake. Sometimes we’ll just pull the kids in a sled. We can also build snow forts and tunnels of all kinds … the time just flies by when we are building things in the snow. And then there’s the trips out to the wood pile to gather firewood to keep the cottage warm. But my favorite part has to be taking the kids over to one of the cottage roads, which becomes a sledding hill when it’s covered in snow. What makes these activities fun is that I get to pretend I’m a kid again. My first responsibility is to take care of my kids and make sure they are safe, but beyond that I like to dig tunnels, go sledding and slide on the frozen lake.

When we play outside, we are all happy. If we dress appropriately we stay very warm. We get a ton of fresh air and we all feel great. We’re all getting plenty of exercise too, which is a lot better than parking our lazy butts in front of the TV all day.

We can’t get outside every day. For example, this week we actually had two solid days of rain. The first day it was more of a mist and we could go outside for only 20 minutes before getting too wet. But the second day it literally poured for hours. That was an inside day. The kids got cranky and so did the parents (yup, nobody is perfect). We ended up playing indoor games and making crafts, which was fine, but for a while we were all just miserable.

The whole point of this post is to provide some perspective on keeping healthy and happy. My opinion is that by getting outside and playing with your kids, you’ll benefit from health and happiness. Those are two priceless “features” that any parent can add to their own life by acting like a kid again, in the presence of your own kids. Try it. It’s also worth noting that to play outside has a price tag of zero. Last time I checked the world was in a major recession (some say depression) … so cheap is good.

If you have a hard time convincing your kids to get outside in the winter weather, I can recommend a great audio course for parenting toddlers that will teach you some fantastic language tools to help influence them. But I’m a bit biased since I wrote the course.

Enjoy your children,
Chris Thompson

Merry Christmas to everyone!  It’s December 24th and my whole family is buzzing with Christmas spirit.  I’ve got iTunes on my Macbook streaming holiday cheer over to my favorite tech gadget, the Airport Express, which connects into the stereo.  My oldest daughter is helping my wife set the table for the huge family gathering that we’ll be having tomorrow.

I was just out doing some last minute shopping for Turkey-cooking stuff that we needed (Aluminum foil, etc).  This made me think of all the parents who are going to be dressing their kids up in their best clothes tomorrow (and tonight), only to see those clothes soiled with all kinds of stains such as gravy, chocolate, and other “guk”.

Let me share my favorite tip to remove these.  If the stain is from something organic (i.e. food), then get yourself some Baby Oxy spray.  There are often no-name equivalents.  This stuff is great.  It’s the same ingredient as what is in a Tide pen, but you get way more for way less money.  It won’t wreck fabrics and it will remove almost any food related stain including red wine.

If you don’t have a spray solution at your grocery store, pick up some oxygen bleach.  Not the chlorine kind!  Make sure it is oxygen bleach.  Then just dilute it to whatever strength you need, put it in an empty Windex bottle and presto!  You have stain fighting power to help you salvage your kids best clothes this holiday season.

I want to wish everyone a happy holidays, whether it be Christmas or any other celebration that you’re enjoying.  The important part is that you are with family.

Enjoy your children,

Chris Thompson

If you have kids, then no doubt you’ve yelled at them.  You’ve probably yelled at them a lot.  I know I’ve yelled at my kids plenty over the years.  But many parents are wondering how they can stop yelling at their kids.

Is there anything wrong with yelling at your kids?  This is sort of like asking if there is anything wrong with eating french fries, drinking alcohol or watching TV.  None of these things are “bad” unless you do them too much.  Too much of anything is never a good idea, and the same thing goes for yelling at your kids.  For that matter the same thing goes for yelling at anyone!

I personally think that we (parents) tend to yell at our kids because we are frustrated, and we expect our kids to behave differently.  If you buy into my theory about frustration and expectation of better behavior, then there are only three ways to change the yelling habit.

1. The first solution is to lose the frustration.  If you are not frustrated, you won’t yell.
2. The second solution is to change your child’s behavior.  Obvious.
3. The third and final solution is to change your perception of acceptable behavior.  If you don’t define the behavior as “bad”, then you won’t yell.

The caveat to all of this is that if the first three “rules” don’t work, then maybe you should be yelling!  I’ll never tell you that it’s a bad idea to yell, it’s just that you need to make it effective when you do it.  If you abuse your “yelling power”, it will lose its effect.  Your kids will start to ignore you and you’ll just be an annoying and ineffective parent.  Besides, you’ll damage your relationship with your kids, add stress to your life and be in a crappy mood more often.  That is not a recipe for a fun life.

So what are some of the solutions?

1) To lose the frustration, you often just need to have a more effective way of dealing with your kids.  This is why I’m such a huge advocate of using language as a tactical tool to influence (read:  gently manipulate) your children into doing what you want them to do, and stopping what you don’t want.  I’m not going to give away the tricks here.

2) Ask yourself if your expectations are reasonable.  What is the risk of changing your expectation?  If your child insists on running over to the sofa with a cup full of purple grape juice, you have a right to expect better.  But if you are getting angry because your 3-year old won’t stop talking, you really need to ask yourself if such behavior seems normal for a 3-year old.  In this case, it’s normal and the “risk” to you of deciding that this behavior is acceptable is pretty much zero.
Take a moment and pretend that you had a friend, spouse, or a boss who yelled at you as much as you yell at your kids.  Vividly imagine this scene in your mind.  If, while doing this, you conclude that you would be really upset with the other person,  then you ought to take this as a clear sign that you are yelling too often.  Find an alternative or risk the long term consequences.

Whatever you decide, make sure you decide to keep the yelling under control.  If you overdo it then you can be absolutely assured that your yelling will lose its power, and have a massive negative impact on your relationship with your kids.

Enjoy your children.

P.S.  In my audio course for parents you’ll find all sorts of great language tools for dealing with the terrible twos and improving child behavior.

The often asked question of how to get your child to listen …

I’d like to give you a few ideas to work with to help you to get your child to listen to you.  First, let’s start with why the are NOT listening.  There is usually one major reason – rapport!  If you are not in rapport with someone, it is very hard to get them to listen to you.  This goes for adults, children, or anyone you are talking to.

To get into rapport you need to engage in some sort of meaningful interaction.  Just imagine what would happen if you walked up to a stranger (a case of zero rapport) and asked that stranger to do something.  Most of the time you’d get a puzzled look and a response such as “get lost”.

You tend to have more natural rapport with your kids if they are young.  With toddlers all you need to do is to enter their world (an expression I use often) and THEN migrate over to whatever you are going to ask them to do.  If they are busy watching TV or playing with their toys, or playing with friends – you are not going to just be able to go up to them and ask them to switch gears on a moment’s notice.

To enter your child’s world, try doing any of these things:

• Ask your child if you can join them
• Ask your child to tell you what they are doing (with enthusiasm)
• Ask a specific question about what they are doing
• Tell them something interesting that relates to what they are doing
• Tell them something funny and relate it to what they are doing

By doing any of these things you will have engaged your child in some kind of interaction, and you won’t be some foreign body trying to push them in a new direction.  Here’s a simple metaphor for you:  How would you like it if you were cozy in bed and somebody came and pulled the covers off, exposing you to the cold air?  If you want to get someone to listen to you, don’t pull off the covers.

I don’t specialize in dealing with older children, but I can tell you that the concepts are the same.  If you fool yourself into believing that your teenager will listen to you just because you are the “older, wiser and more experienced Mom or Dad”, you are going to be in for a sad day.  Build relationships.  Build rapport.  Get into your kids world.  You’ll have MUCH more success.

Learn to make graceful steps and your kids will listen to you.  You’ll see improved child behavior.

I encourage you to check out my audio course for parents.  You’ll love it.

So your toddler won’t eat, and you don’t know what to do?  First, let me clarify by saying that this post is intended to deal with situations where your toddler just doesn’t want to eat.  If your child is sick, that’s another matter.  Parents – remember the last time you were really sick?  You probably didn’t want to eat either.

Before we jump into any solutions, let’s think back to when we were kids.  If you were playing outside with a group of friends and your mother or father opened the front door to shout, “Johnny – come inside for dinner right now!” … did you feel like eating?  Of course not!  You were having too much fun doing whatever else you were doing.  Your toddlers or older children feel the same way that you did back then.  If they are busy with other things, they don’t want to eat right now.

So how do you change this?  With toddlers it can be pretty easy.  All you need to do is distract them from what they are doing through questions or actions.  Once distracted, you can start to lead them in any path that you want to, so long as you keep their attention fully engaged.  Remember – the LAST thing you should do is simply start demanding things such as “get to the table right now, it’s time to eat”.  That just won’t work.  You’ll be inviting a fight or a tantrum.

Always always always use more graceful language tactics to get your way with toddlers.  It’s just easier.  You can learn all about my methods by checking out my audio course.  That is if you are interested in improving child behavior.