Toddler Sleeping On The Floor: 2 Year Old Sleeping Habits

My daughter is nearly 3 years old now and my wife and I can have no complaints, since the age of 6 months old she has slept all night without a hitch. We have not even had a problem for her going to bed we achieved this by putting her into a routine from a very young age. It has been a case of taking her to bed reading her a story and she goes to sleep, she would then stay there all night.

This excellent sleep pattern continued even when we took off the cot bars and changed it into a cot bed, we made sure that we made a fuss of the new bed in order to keep her up with what we were doing and encouraging her to play in the bad, letting her see that it is no different and nothing scary.

First off don’t worry, for the last six months or so she has started to get out of her bed and sleep on the floor even taking her pillow with her. It is difficult for me to remember how this started, the only thing I could refer it back to would be certain times she has been out of routine and my wife and I have tried to get her back into one. We approached this in the normal way taking her to bed for her normal time and reading her a story, only after the story she would get out of bed upset that we had left the room. We decided that the best way to deal with it would be to ignore it for 10 minutes before putting her back into bed and then leave it for longer intervals after that, until she stayed in bed. This resulted however in her falling asleep on the floor, no problem we thought let her get into a deep sleep there and we would put her back in half an hour or so.

We are now at the point where she will go to bed as normal following her story and she stays there when we leave the room, we have the occasional night where she stays in bed all night, but most nights she is up anywhere from 11pm to 1am gets a pillow and a blanket to lie on the floor. This is where she sleeps for the rest of the night.

This really caused my wife a lot of stress as she did not want her sleeping on the floor fearing that she would get to cold, we went on for hours one night going into the room putting her back into bed causing us and our daughter unnecessary stress. This stress that could be avoided by just letting her sleep where she is most comfortable.

We have tried all kind of ideas to get her to sleep in the bed going as far as buying her a new full size single bed and new furniture, doing the same again involving her in picking the bed, letting her get involved in putting the bed together (well you know she watched) and then encouraging her to play in the bed, the new bed seemed a hit she was over the moon and we thought we had the problem solved, not quite!

With the new bed now in place she still gets up around 11pm or so and goes to lie on the floor where she remains for the rest of the night. My wife decided to speak to the midwife regarding the sleeping explaining how good she was before, the midwife came back and said that for a child to sleep on the floor is normal and it happens with hundreds of children especially around our daughters age. It is simply a phase that they go through and for whatever reason that is where they feel most comfortable. Bottom line is if your child is happy and content lying on the floor and they are sleeping through the night then let them sleep there, after all they are in their room and can come to no harm. I can happily report that a full night’s sleep on everyone’s part has now fully resumed.

I really wanted to publish something about this, as from what I have heard we are not the only ones who have worried about this sleeping on the floor situation. I hope its some help and comfort to you knowing that you are not the only one with a toddler that sleeps on the floor, and to find that as long as they are happy you are happy.