What to Do with Twins Climbing Out of Crib

It’s nap time and you start hearing sounds that you shouldn’t be hearing from your twins’ room. Yikes!

What do you do with your twins climbing out of crib during nap time?

It might look something like this:

This is hard because nap time is your sanctuary of peace and serenity in the house. It’s your chance to take a break. It’s your chance to catch up on the work that you have to do around the house.

So when nap time is interrupted by the twins escaping, that does complicate matters.

When do they escape?

Ask yourself if your twins are climbing out of cribs at nap times, is it at the beginning of nap time or is it at the end of nap time?

If it’s the end of nap time, if they have a rest and they are done, I don’t think that’s as big a problem as if it’s at the beginning of nap time. Because in the beginning, escaping is actually interrupting them and preventing them from getting the sleep that they need.

One thing to consider is: are your twins starting to get older and getting past the need for a nap? If they continue to climb out of their crib, it may be a sign that they’re done napping, or maybe they need to go from two naps down to one nap a day.

Stay with Them

If you’re pretty sure that they still need the sleep, one thing you may consider is stay in the room with them until they actually fall asleep. Then day by day, you slowly move out of the room until they are able to fall back to sleep all by themselves. You may have done something similar when they’re infants trying to get them to sleep by themselves.

Separate Twins

Another option is that you can separate the twins to remove any peer pressure of naughtiness. I know when our girls are together, one of them will get a crazy idea and the other will do want to do the same exact thing. And they seem to propel each other to do crazy things which will include not going to sleep.

Sleeping Arrangements

You may want to change sleeping arrangements for your twins. Perhaps move them into separate rooms or maybe consider putting them into a Pack ‘N Play if they are sleeping in their crib, or in their crib if they’re sleeping in a Pack ‘N Play. Definitely make sure that you’ve lowered your crib mattress as low as it will go to prevent them from escaping.

Escape Artists

Take a look at your kids’ room and see are there any tools or furniture that they use to escape. This could be a bookcase, a dresser, something that they hold onto, or fling their leg onto. Check out those different escape routes and see how you can reorganize the nursery to prevent that from happening.

One of twin dad James Frazier’s twins flipped out of the crib and had the wind knocked out of him. That shock led James to completely drop the crib mattress down to the ground.

Signs and Signals

Now ultimately, if you’ve got twins climbing out of cribs at nap time or even at night time, it’s probably a good sign that they’re ready to move to big beds.

When Our Twin Girls Escaped Their Cribs

It was a Sunday evening that my wife and I had put down all the kids for bed: our two older boys and the two year old twin girls. We were just sitting in the family room talking when all of a sudden I heard a thump, pitter patter pitter patter patter, creak opens the door and out walks one of our girls into the family room.

I looked at my wife and my wife looked at me. I stood up and I walked our daughter back to her crib.

I put my daughter in the crib and I closed the door.

As soon as I had shut the door and took a step into the hallway again, I heard a thunk pitter patter pitter patter. Then the door knob turning and the door creaks open again and there stands one of my girls. HUGE smile on her face showing that she thinks this is the funnest game that she has ever played.

Now this was a moment that I was not ready to handle that evening. And as I looked into the room I saw her twin sister in her crib who was starting to lift her leg up upon the rail of the crib trying to mimic what she had just seen her sister do.

My wife and I went into panic mode to figure out what to do with our girls who now had learned how to escape from the cribs.

We thought well it’s not safe for them to be in their cribs if they can just climb out. They’re going to hit their head or something bad.

We decided to move them immediately to the floor where it’s safer for them to sleep.

We took out the mattresses from the cribs we put them on the floor and we tucked the girls in and said “congratulations you’re a big girls now and you get to sleep on big big girl beds on the floor.”

We turn off the light in the room and as soon as we left the room the girls jump up and run around over over to the door open the door and are both laughing and smiling and looking at us.

Oh no, this is not going to work at all.

The mattresses and girls went back into their cribs.

I took a sheet and tied it over the crib of each of our girls. Now our girls thought this was amazing because it was their own little fort that they could sleep in.

Now to us it was great because it prevented them from climbing out of the crib at the top.

What this did was it bought us 24 hours to plan how we were going to tackle this the next bedtime.

The next day when our girls woke up we got them excited. “Today girls is the day that you’re moving to bigger beds just like your brothers are in big beds – you get to go from cribs to big beds!”

We took them to the store and they helped us pick out sheets for their mattresses. They helped us take down the cribs and get everything set up and organized in their bedroom because now they’re big girls and they get bigger beds. So the entire day was anticipation and building up to the night when they would get to sleep in their big girl beds.

The evening came and we went through the bedtime routine and then we got our girls tucked into bed and we turned off the lights and we shut the door and as soon as we shut the door, then was party time. It was like a sorority. Our girls are jumping on the beds screaming running around. They go into their drawers of clothes and they threw out every single piece of clothing that they had on the floor.

My wife and I realized we had forgotten to remove the distractions that would keep them from sleeping. Each time we went to the room we would calm the girls down and we would try to remove some of the distractions.

The first time we went in we put the clothes back in the drawers said you need to stay on your beds. And then we shut the door and left and again and they jumped out of bed. Party time. All the clothes on the floor. The clothes stayed on the floor the rest of the night.

The next time we got the girls settled and we left the room, they start flipping the light switch on and off on off on off on off.

So I went in there with my little step stool to reach up I unscrew each of the light bulbs in the light so now you’re not going to turn a light on or off any more. We got them settled in bed. I left the room and a few moments later I heard cries coming from their bedroom.

I rushed into the bedroom to see what what is the matter. And I noticed that the nightlight that they had had is out. So the room is completely dark.

One of my girls is crying because the room is completely dark and the other girl who is holding the nightlight is crying because (surprise!) a night light is hot.

We took the night light and we put it behind the dresser where they couldn’t reach it and got them settled back into bed and had to repeat this multiple times. That first night it took several hours to get our girls to bed and finally fell asleep.

Over the next several nights as we were consistent in helping our girls get back on their beds. We’d tell them to keep their heads on their pillows and keep their eyes closed.

Each night the party took less and less time and the amount of destruction in the room was less and less. Eventually when we put our girls down to bed, we’d tuck them in, and say goodnight, they’d fall asleep.

Usually as parents you get comfortable in a routine in a schedule and then all of a sudden your kids hit some kind of milestone and everything gets thrown out the window and you have to think fast on your feet and adapt to the situation when your kids start to crawl out climb out of their cribs is one of these milestones that can really wreak havoc on your expectations of a day.

But remember that if you set expectations with your children, if you remove those distractions that can deter them from falling asleep, and if you are consistent every night with what you’re doing, they will eventually get into the habit of falling asleep and not throwing a party every night like our girls did initially.

Even though that may take days or weeks, your twins will really learn what is needed for them to fall asleep on their beds and not in their cribs.

Check out chapter 5 of my book, the Dad’s Guide to Raising Twins: How to Thrive as a Father of Twins where I talked in more depth about how to overcome the challenges of sleeping twins.

This topic was originally addressed on the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Episode 88: Different Not Easier, Crib Escapes, Celebrities and Twins. Original photo by surlygirl