When did your children share a room?

P

plumtree

Registered User
Hi

Just interested to hear other's experiences. We have a two bedroom flat, and our older boy (almost 2.5 years) sleeps alone in one bedroom. His baby brother (7 months) sleeps with us. Older boy's bedtime is about 8pm and he wakes up (on a good day!) at about 6:30-7pm. Baby's bedtime is about 7:45 and he wakes at about 6am (but I don't actually get him up till 6:20-6:30am).

My question is when can they start to share a room and how did you do it? If we had a larger flat, we'd put baby in his own room now, but we don't. It's nice for me to have a little baby roommate, but the boys will have to share at some point and should I start them sharing soon? What problems did you encounter and how did you deal with the night wakings?

Older boy generally sleeps through except when he has bad dreams or is scared by the thunder. Baby sleeps through with a few squeaks or groans, but the squeaking gets louder at about 6am. Baby does not mind where he sleeps, but the older one likes things to be just so and I'm a bit concerned as to how he'd cope with his brother being in the same room. Both are in cots (I have an earlier thread about the older one being put in a bed and waking up daily at 5am) and so can't get out.

Thanks for sharing!
 
we put our second into share with her big brother when she was 6 m. The first week there were a few wakings but after that it settled back to normal. They are now 3 & 5 and LOVE sharing a room.
 
that's awesome to hear Carang. we also do not have a room big enough for both of them yet. girl 4.5y and boy 2.5y, big sis has the bigger room and a big 4ft bed now, so is a bit skeptical of having to share a room, little brother is in his own smaller room, but many of my friends with siblings had said sharing a room improves the relationship (they can have their night time bickering sessions towards mommy :p). we'll be looking to have them share with the next move. so would love to hear more from others, especially with siblings of different genders.
 
we are lucky in that we have 5 bedrooms, so we could choose whether the kids shared a 300' room or they each had their own 120' rooms. we chose the sharing, for now at least, and as i said, they LOVE it. they don't bicker, they talk to each other and sing "nighttime songs" for each other before they go to sleep. neither of them remembers having separate rooms as my son was only 2.5 when we put them together.

the biggest problem i have is decorating the room... so all we have in their rooms are their bed, bedside tables & matching dressers. that's it... nothing else.
 
That's great to hear! Elder son has a real sense of 'where things should be', and if we so much as bring a toy from the living room into his room as he's about to go to bed, we get cries of "put it outside, put it outside". How did you handle the first night with the older one? Just explained it to him/her nicely?
 
we just said plainly... your sister is getting big now and she needs to be in your room with you. only babies sleep in the room with mummy and daddy.

we've never really anticipated dramas in our house as they've never materialised.

as for things being in the right place, my son is similar... just now, when i put the book after story time on TOP of his table, he very calmly explained that stories & books go UNDER the table and i should put it away properly!
 
Hmmm. Our oldest, unfortunately, is a bit of a drama queen. Buoyed up by your success, we'll give it a go over the weekend!
 
due to space, my daughters will be sharing a room when they are 6mths and 2 1/2 years old....my older one is a very good sleeper and sleeps through everything....am crossing my fingers that #2 will be just as good so things will be easier for me! :)
 
Hi Plumtree :)

I remember that our kids are similar ages almost to the day!

We were a bit mad, our younger one was in with her brother from the age of around 4 mos.

The reason for this was convenience more than anything. Our room is upstairs, the cot downstairs in my son's bedroom. They're used to each other and one rarely wakes up the other.

Things have been peachy since. Yes, its a little more hassle having to go into the room to pick my littler one up whens he's teething/lost a dummy/ growth spurt / <endless...>
but Im happy with how things are.

Ironically, my sister is visiting us from Oz so we actually did dismantle the cot and bring it upstairs to make room and my 7 month old gets woken up by her brother via the baby monitor...this rarely happened when they were in the same room!!
 
We got both ours to share a room when our daughter was almost 1 and when my son was 3-ish. We did it after we came back from a long-haul trip... They were sleeping together in one room for a few weeks when we were traveling and I figured that they had to adjust back to HK time anyway when we came back, so we decided to get them to room together once we came back.

When the little one would cry at night in the earlier days (teething, night terrors, etc.), our son would just sleep through. It went more smoothly than I had anticipated, even though friends who have done the same thing had assured me that it would not be hard at all. :)
 
Hmm, I'm just sitting here listening to "Mummy, put C outside, put him outside". I've been in there a couple of times already and am just sitting here now to see what happens. Sigh...crying volume increasing...better go in.
 
So happy to hear all the positive experiences! I'm contemplating moving my 8 mo old son with my 3 yr old daughter soon...
 
After two nights of both boys sleeping together, it's going pretty well. There are still cries of "put it outside" at bedtime, but less so. All's well apart from the loud rendition of "Wheels on the Bus" at 4am and again at 5am last night, and some crying and mucking around from older brother. My fault for telling older brother he had to sing to baby to comfort him!

All though this, there was not a peep from baby, who just loves being in the same room with older brother.
 
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