22 month old suddenly refuses to go to bed/stay asleep (or in bed?!)

[danimama]

My 22 mo son has been a pretty decent sleeper his whole life... slept in his crib in his own room from 4 weeks old and in general always puts himself to sleep. Exceptions have been brief periods when he was either teething (he now has 16 teeth) or trying out a new developmental milestone like rolling over, crawling, even starting to make new babbling talking sounds - he would always do these things at night so they would keep him up...
We also had a period at about 15 months old when a combination of a stomach virus/bad habits (coming into our bed b/c of throwing up in the middle of the night) and one parent traveling for work (separation anxiety) kept us all pretty sleep deprived for about two weeks. But that passed.
For the past 7 months, I would venture to say he has been a GREAT sleeper. He sings or talks himself to sleep after our pretty consistent routine, bedtime at about 8:30, wakes in a good mood at 7-7:15.
Until this week.
All of a sudden, out of the blue, he screams cries and refuses to go to sleep - even after telling us he was ready to go to sleep - and we can't comfort him for about an hour - then at 10pm after we thought he was asleep, he starts crying again, and we go up to find he has climbed out of his crib.
He'd never shown any signs of being interested in climbing out.
He refused to go back into his crib, climbed out (and fell) at 4am, ended up in our bed.
So we put him in the pack n play. He seemed OK at first, but quickly refused again to sleep. He figured out how to climb out of the pack n play, he won't stay asleep, hates every noise, wants to sleep with us in his room or in our bed, and we're all strung out and tired.
My impulse is to get rid of the crib, put the mattress on the ground, and a gate on the door.
Our daycare provider thinks that it is just a phase, he'll be back in the crib. this seems risky given his ability to scale the railings? Any thoughts on why this behavior would be occurring, or what to do about it?  

[allmymarbles]

I would get rid of the crib because climbing out of it is dangerous. And should he hurt himself getting out you might not know because he is not in your room. At 18 months I put the children in a miniature bed, low to the floor, and tucked them in snugly. That worked well except for child #4, who would get out of bed and wander. This was dangerous so we put her to sleep in one of those playpens with webbed sides. She could not get out of that. But we did put the playpen in our bedroom out of concern for her safety. When she was a little older we put her back in the bedroom with her sisters.

Is it possible that your son is having nightmares?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

First, I agree that it would not be prudent to eliminate the crib at his young age. His pattern has been that he displays unsettled sleep pattern intermittently. The pattern continues. If indeed history is the best predictor, he'll return to his baseline pattern. Don't reinforce the current unsettledness by having him sleep with you. You're going to be tired as you move through this, but that is part of parenting. Stick with the ususal routine.