Putting Two To Bed

[WittyUsername123]

This may not seem like an adoption question but it is in an adoption context…

We are in the odd situation of helping two LOs, who are living separately, transition to us. LO3 has been with us about a month, and LO22mo will move in in January.

My question is, we have established a simple yet effective bedtime routine with LO3 (dinner, play, bath, story, bed) which is working and can be done by one person. While we know it will be all hands on deck when LO22mo first joins, the bedtime routine would, ideally, be something we could events adapt to be done by one person.

Dinner, play and bath are easy to do together, but how to manage story and bed solo? LO3 needs someone to sit with him until he falls asleep at the moment.

When our daughter first arrived we tried to do parts of the routine together (she was the second) but that didn’t work for her and she often got over stimulated. So we ended up doing bath separately and basically each taking a child and doing the whole routine.

now it’s evolved and she is loving life and they mostly do it together. Be open to change, but I would start off with the routine being almost entirely separate. Both children will need one on one time.

but take it easy and go slow!

You could stagger their bedtimes, so youngest half an hour before the older, that way you can do stories separately and once you’ve tucked the younger in start story time with the older one?

With my two we did a story together in my DS’s room and then put DD to bed in her room. If they’ve not lived together though you may find joint bath and story don’t work so well - they may need that 1:1 time especially getting ready to settle to sleep.

I’d be guided by what works for the children rather than working out too much beforehand - it’s good to have a toolkit of ideas you can draw on but to some extent you’ll be guided by what they can tolerate. Believe me, it’s all hands on deck when you have two in early placement.

I've found in the night garden amazing at helping with this and also audio books for the older one.maybe you can introduce quiet time to enable desperate bedtimes?or slowly bring the bedtimes together,we did cosleeping with me in the middle,do a story and snuggle down together.may not work at first but worth a thought as time goes on ? It's all so hard!

Ours had a 5 year age gap when placed (still have a 5 year age gap actually ). Both of us were involved in bedtimes, but we alternated. So one night DH did DD1 and I did DD2, then we swapped the next.

My suggestion would be do what you can both DC together, and bring in partner for the last bit where they need to be separate. Maybe whoever does main bit doesn't do the sitting with to sleep?

Alternating really helped us as it stopped bedtime being dependent on me.