Siblings Sharing a Room!

I have had many requests lately for a blog on siblings sharing a room!

Many times, usually out of necessity, we have to have our children share a room! I remember sharing a room with my sister growing up. According to my Mom, I used to get up quite frequently at night and cry or sit at the baby gate that was in my doorway. For some reason, my parents moved my baby sister in the room with me. Thinking back, I don’t know why they would do this, since I wasn’t sleeping well, but they did and I never had sleeping issues again!
I am a big fan of siblings sharing a room, it creates great childhood memories and makes a beautiful bond.
So here are some key tips to help you when you are getting ready to move siblings together.
1. Make sure all the children involved are already sleeping well. There is no sense moving children in together if they aren’t decent sleepers. So get the sleep training over with first!
2. For young babies make sure night feeds are down to a minimum. If you have a baby (under a year) that needs to share a room with an older sibling, make sure the baby isn’t waking any more than one time a night for a feed. It isn’t ideal to have the possibility of a sibling being disturbed because baby needs multiple feeds a night.
3. Set the mood! Make sure that you have your sleep environment set up. Get those black out curtains out, set the white noise machine up and set the temp between 68-70 degrees.
4. Make sure the room is safe! This is especially important if you have an older child in a toddler bed sharing a room with a younger baby in a crib. You need to make sure that there is nothing dangerous that the older child might put in the younger child’s crib. Securing all furniture to the wall is a good idea as well!
5. Set up the sleep rules chart! For children over two years of age, making a sleep rules chart is really important. Sit and have a discussion with your child on the importance of sleep and how we need sleep to be strong. Then on a big piece of poster board, right out your night time ritual and the sleep rules that you have in place. Make this a happy time of talking about sleep and decorating the poster. Then go and hang it in your child’s room!
6. Call the family meeting! Once you have made the sleep rules chart , the next important step is to call a family meeting. Get everyone(and I mean everyone , mom, dad, siblings, pets, stuffed animals etc.) together and have your child(ren) explain the sleep rules to everyone attending. Even though this sounds silly, never underestimate the power of the family meeting!
7. Follow through! Once you have the sleep rules chart and family meeting in place, you must remain consistent! This is key
8. Taper bedtime if you can. If you have a younger child that goes to bed first. Go ahead and put them down. Then wait 20-30 minutes after they fall asleep. At this point they should drop off into deep Non REM stage 4 sleep! At this point it should be easy for you to quietly walk your older child in the room and put them in bed.
9. Expect a rough first week! It will take at least a good week, for your children to get used to each other and their sleeping noises! Power through and remain consistent!
10. Remember that it isn’t as hard as you think it will be! I promise that there is always trepidation and worry about siblings sharing a room in regards to sleep. But it won’t be as bad as you think it will be! I promise!