Kids Sharing a Room?

cnbean · January 2015

So we are wanting/needing to move LO out of our room and into his brother's room. I think I've built it up in my head to a bigger deal than it will be, but I'm in need of some advice to make this a smooth adjustment. My biggest concerns are Big Brother climbing into the crib to play with him, or trying to pick him up. He also likes to fight bedtime and turn the overhead light on. And since they both go to bed about the same time, if Big Brother is awake and turning lights on it will keep LO up too.

MamaFantastic · January 2015

how old is the big sibling? our two kids share a room, but kiddo is 4 years older than T, so we can trust him a bit more and he's not quite as impulsive as he would be if he was 2 years old.

he plays with her in the morning, which is cute. he sleeps like a dead person, so he hardly ever wakes up when she wakes to eat. but sometimes he's loud and he wakes her up (on purpose or accidentally) so it's not ideal. we room share because we have to. we only have 2 bedrooms upstairs. the third one is in the basement and it's my studio space.

when kiddo went through a phase of wanting to turn the lights on all the time (around 3 or 3.5) we had to just take the bulbs out of the light altogether. do whatever works

strawberrytree · January 2015

Mine will be sharing too. I haven't moved baby bro in yet, but I know I have to do it soon. My older one is 2.5 and I'm worried about baby brother waking up big bro in addition to your concerns, since he doesn't sttn yet. And naps. Ugh. I have no advice but am following since I'm in the same boat.

Teresa1896 · January 2015

Our dd is 3.5 and shares a room with LO. Most of the time it's fine, but naptimes are the biggest issue, because if dd is not napping, she is playing around and making noise, which wakes lo up. We've solved the problem by having the older one nap in the guest room.

At night, LO still wakes up crying to eat and sometimes wakes dd up (I hear her telling him, "it's ok, buddy!"). She goes back to sleep quickly.

When we sleep train again, I will temporarily put dd in the guest room at night, so she's not bothered by the screaming/crying. And honestly, she's the reason why I don't let him CIO sometimes-- because I don't want his wakeups to wake her up. He'd quickly remember how to self-soothe if i let him fuss a bit.

Jessimax · January 2015

MamaFantastic said:
how old is the big sibling? our two kids share a room, but kiddo is 4 years older than T, so we can trust him a bit more and he's not quite as impulsive as he would be if he was 2 years old.

he plays with her in the morning, which is cute. he sleeps like a dead person, so he hardly ever wakes up when she wakes to eat. but sometimes he's loud and he wakes her up (on purpose or accidentally) so it's not ideal. we room share because we have to. we only have 2 bedrooms upstairs. the third one is in the basement and it's my studio space.

when kiddo went through a phase of wanting to turn the lights on all the time (around 3 or 3.5) we had to just take the bulbs out of the light altogether. do whatever works

Pretty much this word for word, minus the studio space. Our biggest issue is naps because he wants to play in his room but can't while she naps. Only 3 more months till a new house with separate bedrooms!

cnbean · January 2015

DS1 is almost 3. I'm not so worried about the baby waking him up since he sleeps heavily, and goes back to sleep easily. We probably will have to pull the light bulbs out for a while at least, because I'd say 75% of the time he falls asleep with the light on. Which will not fly with the LO.

I am totally dreading this, and looking forward to it at the same time.

JWest07 · January 2015

strawberrytree said:
Mine will be sharing too. I haven't moved baby bro in yet, but I know I have to do it soon. My older one is 2.5 and I'm worried about baby brother waking up big bro in addition to your concerns, since he doesn't sttn yet. And naps. Ugh. I have no advice but am following since I'm in the same boat.

This. I hope some more advice comes in.

kwolslager · January 2015

all three of my girls share. The 5 yo is a huge help but we had problems with my 2 yo climbing in the crib to give Nally "kisses".

In terms of the light do you know if tape will work? We had the same issue the first few days and then DH took a piece of duct tape and covered the switch. It worked for us, however I know some kids are not phased by something like that and will just rip it down.

This is really the only thing I could find in terms of switch covers

https://www.ebay.com/itm/like/110815636787?lpid=82&chn=ps

Unfortunately there are hardly any options for this.

In terms of climbing into the crib what we did was we made a huge deal of it when it happened. Acted really upset and explained (in a way a 2 yo would understand) that baby could get hurt. We even did a time out for it. (we do one minute per yr of age)
We had to go through this twice, and it finally sunk in. Haven't had any issues since.

CurlieWhirlie · January 2015

We're going to have to put M in the same room with E, who is five, at some point, but I was really hoping to hold out until he's really STTN. We live in a small 3br house, our bedroom is upstairs off the kitchen and the living room, and the kids' rooms are downstairs. I really don't want to move M out of our room and downstairs until I know I only have to go down there once a night, or not at all. For E it wasn't until he was 2. So maybe another 18 months sharing our room? Ugh, when I write it out like that it seems like forever. Le sigh.

cnbean · January 2015

Glad to know I'm not the only one in the same boat! We did put tape over the light switch when he first started turning it on. I think it lasted a day before he ripped it right off. @kwolslager Thanks for the advice. I hope it will be just as quick for DS as it was for your kiddo. Usually timeouts don't seem to really have much impact on him so I'm not sure.

The last 2 nights he has been awake until almost 10pm. Just about the time I think he's asleep in there he starts talking and making a bunch of noise. Ugh.

fireflygirl12 · January 2015

Ours share a room, but DS1 is 28mo and still in a crib. Most nights are fine, but if one wakes up, then the other one almost always does too. Sometimes it can take hours to get them both back to sleep in the middle of the night. We put DS2 down about 5-10min before DS1 so that he is already sleeping when DS1 comes in.

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