Sleep Training in a Toddler Bed

We were in this EXACT situation 6mos ago. I feel your pain. DS kept us up coming out of his room from 12:30-4:30 one night. No chance.

We also have lever handles on our doors, so we just reversed them, so the lock is on the outside. Yes, we lock him in his room.
We don't leave him to scream behind a locked door. We do go to him when he cries. But after a few days of us tucking him back in after he tried the locked door, he understood that locked = night night. It's a beautiful thing.

I've had someone out here call me incredibly lazy for not simply walking him back to bed each time. 1) this worked for our family, and I work full time AND have a newborn. So being up all night walking him back to bed is not an option and 2) MANY people I know do exactly the same thing.

We had tried bed rails (he'd climb around), a gate (he'd climb over), I think crib tents are ridiculous, and my favorite that someone else suggested...."just explaining to him that he sholud stay in bed"...if your kid is anything like mine, you might actually SEE him give you the finger.

Figure out what works for you. A gate, a handle lock, reversing the knobs, something.

This might be a silly question... but... have you actually TOLD him he needs to stay in his bed and go right to sleep?

Another idea: My son has had a job chart since he was that age. He's almost 5 now so the jobs listed are more of chores and self-care tasks, but at that age, he just had "stay in bed" and "use the potty." I just made the chart as a table in word. There was a clip-art pic of a kid in bed and a kid on the potty (smh) and a bunch of open squares to get stars. We STILL don't have any reward at the end of getting stars (check marks now). He just gets them. Silly, I know, but it works for him.

HTH
T.

What about full length (length of the bed) rails on each side of the bed?

It took my son a few months to adjust to freedom of toddler bed. He was slightly older than your son (around 22 months, i believe) when he moved into his bed. We put a gate in his door way. That way he can still open his door but he is confined inside. I thought locking him in a room would be rather scary so we did not want to do that. He has since learned to climb over it but luckily 99% of the time he will stay in his room. He would come to the gate and yell for me etc. If your husband was always helpful with bedtime, this may not work for you. In our case, I was always the one who put him to bed, got up with him at night and mornings. After a couple months of toddler bed madness, my husband said, that is it. I am taking over. We followed our normal bedtime routine, I tucked him in etc. Then I would say, I need to go take a shower and I love you and will see you in the morning. About 5 minutes later he would run to his gate in his door way and start yelling for me. My husband went to him and said, Mommy is busy. It is bedtime. He walked him back to bed. I think my son was so baffled that I did not come and my husband did,he just laid down and went to sleep. This happened a couple more nights but then we finally got to the point where after I said my goodnights, he stayed put. Good luck.

Either put a gate up over his door or what I am going to do is get a video monitor for his room and just turn the knob around and lock him in there. You can always unlock it once he is asleep or until morning if you like. My friend did this and had great success and doesn't have to lock it anymore. But be sure to have a key in the childs room in case it gets locked and locks you in as that happened to my friend. Best of luck with this and your new baby.