Find Success with Sibling Room Sharing
Are you aware of how expensive it is to live in Colorado’s ski resort area? Housing is really expensive.
I had a professional connection reach out to me on a personal level, in regards to having her children share a room. They’d been looking for a 3-bedroom apartment, with no luck. They settled for a 2-bedroom, but now were faced with a new problem: how to successfully set things up so her 18-month-old and her 5-year-old could successfully share a bedroom without waking the other up.
She wanted to know how to go about arranging things so this could be a long term, flourishing solution for their family in their new living situation.
Setting Up the Bedroom
Just like you’d want the sleep environment to be set up, so it’s conducive to quality sleep if your child was sleeping in their own room, you want to set it up similarly if they’re room sharing.
Make sure you’ve got a totally blacked out room. It needs to be a cave-like level of darkness. You’ll also want to make sure the sleeping spaces ie: beds, cribs, pack n play are set up as far apart as possible. Place a sound machine - or, better yet two sound machines - between the children to help drown out noises from one another while sleeping and falling asleep.
Nuances for Sibling Room Sharing
In this case in particular, I also asked the mom to place a white noise machine in the hallway outside of the room along with utilizing a draft stopper for the door since the girls’ bedtimes were staggered. The baby (18 months) went down between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., and the older sister went down between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m.
Have a Family Meeting
Having a family meeting - whether your children are currently room sharing or are about to - can be helpful in showing your children that everyone is on the same page with the expectations for bedtime and sleep.
During this meeting, you will talk about what the bedtime routine is going to be, and what the expectations are for this time in the evening. If your children’s bedtimes will be staggered, make sure your older child knows what is expected of them while the younger one is getting ready for bed. Also, make sure to cover other important topics that may arise in a room sharing situation:
How do we enter the bedroom if/when a sibling is already asleep?
When is it okay to get out of bed?
What should I do if my sibling is making noise at bedtime?
What should I do if my sibling wakes me up during the night?
Routines for Sibling Room Sharing
Let’s dive into what a bedtime routine can look like in a few different situations:
Siblings with Staggered Bedtimes
If at all possible, do the bathing and brushing of teeth all at the same time with all the children involved. That way, it’s all taken care of and you can focus on the rest of each routine without needing to go back and forth between the bathroom and bedroom.
In this situation, we chatted about how this would look when mom was putting the baby down for bed. What would the older child do? We decided that mom would give her the choice of deciding between
Helping with the baby’s bedtime
OR
Doing something quietly by herself for a few minutes
Most of the time, the older daughter wanted to help mom and put the baby to bed - it was so sweet! So, together, they would read the baby two books, they’d sing the baby two lullabies, then lay the baby down in her crib before they said goodnight and exited the room.
Then, it was time for mom to spend some quality one-on-one time with the older daughter! They would play together in the living room for a bit, then read two books with her. After they were done reading, they’d walk into the room quietly, say prayers, and mom would exit the room again.
Siblings With the Same Bedtime
Now, let’s say your children are on the same schedule and they both go to bed at the same time each night.
You’re really going to emphasize the expectations after lights are out for the night. One thing that can be a really helpful cue for young children is the use of a toddler clock, like the Hatch. This device plays white noise and uses colored lights to distinguish between periods of wakefulness and periods of sleep. You can program it to meet your needs. Make sure your children know what colors mean different things. These are things you can discuss in your family meeting.
Then, you may need to follow through with positive or negative reinforcement until everyone is on the same page and bedtime is going smoothly.
Learn more about ideal bedtime routines based on age here.
Need Help Navigating Your Children’s Room Sharing Situation?
I know it can be tricky to navigate bedtimes with siblings who share a room. I know it can be tricky when one child is waking up another.
If you’re uncertain about how to approach your situation, or you know that your children would benefit from learning independent sleep with room sharing, make sure you checkout my sleep services! I have a 30-minute consultation option that would be perfect for an already-good-sleeper looking to navigate changes or something like this, and I have a full sleep support package that will help your not-so-great sleeper master that first. Learn more about our sleep services here.
