How do I get my toddler to stay in bed?

I call this technique "the mean daddy." It involves hanging out outside the child's door and listening. As soon as little feet hit the ground, daddy walks in and puts the child back in bed. No discussion, no words, just back in bed. Daddy is all business. Toddler will get closer to the door the more toddler shows ninja sneak skills.Toddler will be entertained by this for a while and continue playing. That's okay, daddy likes raising a ninja. Don't get frustrated, don't get angry. Don't feel sad for the manipulative hysterical crying. Toddler is trying to exploit biological inklings to be nurturing. That means the toddler wins. Daddy doesn't like to lose. Daddy is a stone cold ninja in the dark listening for the pitter-patter of padawan feet. The toddler will play this game for around 2.5 hours the first night. Daddy will win. Toddler will play for maybe an hour for the second night. Daddy still wins. You'll have a whole bunch of 15-30 minute nights after that. Daddy has no problem with getting a 30 day win streak. Then, all of a sudden, toddler realizes that daddy always wins and toddler stays in bed and goes to sleep. Daddy always wins. Daddy is more stubborn than a toddler, and daddy brings beer.

Other parents keep telling me to baby proof the crap out of his room, install a video monitor, and shut his door. But this feels cruel. Nope, it's not. Presumably he has toys and books and a night light in his room? It's a magical wonderland of delight. Put on some soft music if he likes that. He will learn to self-soothe. This is basically what my parents did to me, and it's exactly what the parents of the brightest child I ever babysat for did for him. It resulted in kids who could play and learn independently. Caveat: not a parent, don't want kids, feel free to ignore me. Just simply saying that this system can absolutely work.

Other parents keep telling me to baby proof the crap out of his room, install a video monitor, and shut his door. But this feels cruel. I've tried shutting his door for 30 seconds and he gets hysterical. We started doing this for naps and are now moving it to bedtime. She only really gets hysterical when she thinks one of us is listening. After it's clear that no one is coming she turns it off like a light switch. She has a doll, some books, and some blankets that she likes to arrange after we're gone. When she's upset about something else or when she's sick it doesn't work quite as well, but this is the route we're taking and it really doesn't feel cruel once we realized she was only throwing a fit as a performance.

Our technique was just to roll with it and stay in the room until the kid was asleep. Kid went into bed, and the deal was I'd stay in the rocking chair across the room provided she stayed in her bed after tucks and kisses and jugs and rubbing her tush. In that rocking chair, while I waited for her to fall asleep, I listened to podcasts, read several Jane Austen books on my phone, played ridiculous amounts of Princess Debut, Harvest Moon, and Phoenix Wright on my Nintendo DS, and in general had a fabulous time. To be honest, I kind of miss that quiet hour now that she's too big for that.

So we have a video monitor, and we close the door to keep the sound down and motivate him to sleep (but we did that when they was sleeping in the crib too), what really made the difference for us with our two boys was the video monitor. We'd put them down and watch it for awhile. If they got out of bed, we'd tell them to get back in bed (without opening the door). Our current model allows you to talk through the monitor, which is awesome. We call it the Voice of God mode. Mine always had this shocked, "How did she know I was getting up?" look whenever they got up, and it stopped them cold. Once they thought I would always know when they were getting up, they stopped trying. Both of my boys can open doors themselves (and could when we started this), so the door being closed didn't really stop them if they needed or wanted to leave.

And.... He slept all night! He woke up at 5:30 but sat in bed reading for a while. Here's hoping it wasn't a one time thing.

Our friends went the route of baby proof room, video monitor, baby gate with open door. They have a two year old. They did a gentle transition with one of them sleeping on a mattress on the floor next to her toddler bed, and did a lot of explaining and repetition about how it was her room and she would sleep by herself to get her ready to be in there alone. I think it took about a month and she stays in bed now. We have a kid the same age and are going the same route once I get his room fully baby-proofed. They have http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003OJAQVM?vs=1 gate and swear by it.

I stood inside the bedroom door and sang soothing songs. When he got out of bed, I shut the door, staying inside with him. When he got back into bed, I opened the door again. I repeated again and again to him that he could have the door open as long as he stayed in his bed, but that the door would be closed if he got out of bed. For some reason he really wanted that door to be open, so this was strongly motivating. Over the course of several nights, we spent a few trying hours on the door open/closed thing, with me in the bedroom with him. It was well worth it because he could not fall asleep unless he stayed in bed long enough. This was straight out of Richard Ferber's book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. The book is about all sorts of solutions, not just crying-it-out as some people would have you believe.

Installed a baby gate in front of the room which helped keep the kiddo to the room. I took out anything potentially dangerous, and let the kiddo learn to sleep in her room. Didn't care if it was in the bed or on the floor!