To ask my toddler to be quiet while the baby is sleeping?

[postmanshere]

Please be kind, trying to navigate this. My 3 year old is loud. All the time. Especially when she plays. I have a 5 week old who is constantly being woken up by her. I feel mean telling her to be quiet because she’s just being a kid and she didn’t ask to have to share her space with a baby. But it’s exhausting consistently having to put the baby back to sleep after she’s woken up 30 seconds after I put her down. And telling the toddler to be quiet every two minutes, only for her to have a tantrum over it. Is it unreasonable to request quiet?

YABU, and you are also setting your poor toddler up to resent her sibling.

@QuickPeachPoet It’s everyone’s home! That doesn’t mean a toddler takes over the narrative. A baby came left in a vest and nappy to sleep in heat and could be in adjacent room in a muses basket. That’s perfectly safe. If you don’t like that then it’s difficult to see what the answer is. A 3 year old is a pre school child so could be at nursery. Having quieter play is also good for them and it preps for school. Making noise all the time is wearing and not necessary. I cannot remember having this issue but my eldest loved being read to. So all of us had a quiet time.

Here to offer my sympathies, we have a 3.5 yo & almost 8 month old (November isn’t where it is at either as baby was so over stimulated by our Christmas tree 😂)

Personally I didn’t want to kill joy toddlers fun and create a negative association with the baby so we did loads of practicing of whispering etc whilst baby settled into the noise. Now we have set (ish) nap times we say, baby sis is going to sleep now. We did do nap times upstairs from about 3 months though so that was easier too.