I have twins aged 2 and a 6 year old, DS1, one twin, who I will call twin A is going through a phase of biting his brother, twin B.
I’m saying no but it isn’t helping. I can manage this fine in the daytime by keeping a close eye on them, but naps and bedtimes are becoming a problem. They still sleep in with me and DH and are likely to until a move which we hope will be in the New Year. Can’t change this as only two bedrooms of our rented 3 bed are habitable.
They can get out of their cots so are in cotbeds and can get out and climb into each other’s beds. Twin B normally has a little whinge before going off, recently though he has been really, really crying at bedtime. Once DH went up and he said A was bouncing on B in his bed but he separated them and all was okay. The next day at bedtime B cried again so I went up and brought him down to comfort him and wait until A went to sleep. Then I noticed he had a bite mark on his leg that was not there when he went to bed. They are deep and hard enough to leave a real mark. It only goes one way and B doesn’t retaliate, just cries.
I managed to deal with this by staggering bedtimes so A went up half an hour earlier and B when he was asleep. This isn’t working anymore either because B is so upset being bitten that he screams the place down if he’s left on his own with A even if A is sleeping. So of course A wakes up and starts being rough with him.
So the last couple of days at nap time I’ve taken A to bed but let B go to sleep on the sofa in the living room then carried him up, worked fine. I wanted to do that last night too, but DH complained it was too late for B to be up, he needed some time without children and that I just wanted to keep him up because he’s cute and I’m wrapped around his little finger. So my plan was that I would take B up when A was asleep, but instead of putting him in a cotbed I put him in my bed and got in with him and stayed with him. DH put DS1 to bed with stories. This time my plan failed because knowing I was in bed, after DH went downstairs my eldest wanted to come in with me and woke everybody up and wouldn’t stop chattering and sleep. He had a tantrum about being sent to his room and kept coming back in which meant everybody was awake. Both of the twins were in with me but I couldn’t get them off and when they looked like going off their brother would reappear asking for a glass of water or a tummy ache etc, etc.
After about an hour A was wide awake pulled off all his clothes and his nappy so I called DH asking for help. I wanted one of us to get A dressed and babies off to sleep while the other settled DS1. Anyway he came upstairs shouting ‘What, what’ on the way up. Didn’t give me a chance to say what had happened I what I wanted. He saw A naked and went crackers at me calling me useless. He put picked A up and went downstairs and stood at the foot shouting ‘Where’s A’s sleepsuit, where’s the sleepsuit’ every ten seconds’. I didn’t know where it was so I had to switch on the light to find it. I didn’t find it straight away so DH came up and spotted it instantly and called me useless again and told me to get out of the room and take DS1 to bed. Which I did. He got the babies off to sleep in about ten minutes and I got DS1 off in not much longer.
Went downstairs and he started yelling at me. He reckoned I’d taken the children up there. Got A undressed, taken off his nappy not bothered to put anything on him then let DS1 come in and play with the twins for an hour with the lights on while I ignored them. I don’t know what he thought I’d be doing, I didn’t have my phone or books with me.
I let him calm down a bit and explained I’d been trying to get them to sleep for an hour. He called me useless again because it had only taken him ten minutes. So I told him that was because DS1 wasn’t disturbing them so he said I should have told DS1 to go to bed. I explained I had and that what we ended up doing was what I wanted to suggest and that it had worked. I told him the light had only gone on when he asked for the sleepsuit and A had only been naked for seconds when I called him.
I’ve asked him what he thinks I should have done differently and how he thought we should handle the situation in future. The only way I can see of doing it is either someone sits with DS1 to stop him coming in while the other is settling the babies and preventing biting or letting B go to sleep on the sofa then putting him in his cot so he doesn’t wake A crying.
He won’t agree to either of these and the only alternative he will suggest is that we take the twins up at the same time and leave them and if B gets bitten, he gets bitten. He says they’d still go to sleep quicker. I won’t agree to that, B is clearly already frightened and if A is just left to bite him he’ll keep on doing it because he’ll think it’s okay. So we’re at a bit of a deadlock.
AIBU not to agree to just leaving them to it? And can anybody suggest any alternative because we’re both at our wits end. DH isn’t normally like this so it’s not a situation where I want to LTB but I don’t know what to do.
Sorry for rambling, I only had 3 hours sleep last night because I was so upset.