Children room sharing

[Mamamoose1]

Hi,
My 9 and 4 year old children are currently sharing a room, they had their own bedrooms previously. They have found the transition quite difficult (particularly the 9 year old). They aren't sleeping until at least 10.30 (most nights), both are absolutely shattered at the moment, we try and put them to bed at separate times, half an hour difference, but when my 9 year old goes into the room he makes too much noise and shines his torch, which then disrupts our youngest son, then they are both awake, so proceed to keep each other awake until late, this is happening on a daily basis, both are struggling to wake up for school and get motivated, as a result. Is it important to enforce some rules? Or shall I just hope things settle down soon? Thanks!

Why are you letting the 9yo wake the 4yo up?!?!

I have my 6yo and 4yo DTs sharing. DTs go up 30 mins before the eldest and they go straight off usually as often very tired. DC1 is taken up by me or DH having been reminded to creep in and not wake them, the light from the landing light through the semi open door is enough to see by to tuck him in - definitely no torches!!

Have a talk with your eldest, explain it is a treat to stay up a bit later as he is older but if he cant creep in without waking the younger he will have to go to bed first and the younger one can stay up. my eldest would hate that. If we've had a couple of days of them not settling we go back to the standard offering of stickers for their reward chart if they are good.

if its really bad you could wait outside the door to make sure he has settled down so you are on hand to quickly tell him to be quiet if he starts trying to wake the younger?

Is the room big enough that you could rig a curtain between their beds to give the illusion of separate rooms perhaps?

I don't think he intentionally wakes his younger brother up, as the room is quite small and beds quite close together, it can be difficult at times, he just isn't always considerate in that he makes too much noise entering the room, then shining his torch, picking things up etc. We have spoken to him tonight and reminded him to be considerate otherwise he would start losing privileges, which seemed to work a treat tonight and also threatened to take away his torch if he kept shining it at his brother. Thank you for your advice.

do you/DH go in with him? kids tend not to notice how loud they are being on their own, if you are with him you can 'shhh' him straight away if he starts making noise? and also perhaps stop outside the door and remind him the rules 'no DS, straight into bed, no touching toys and no waving the torch, ok?' so its really fresh in his mind.

you could also try leaving it an extra 10 mins before taking DS in? it could be that you happen to be going in when your youngest is in a lighter phase of sleep so is waking easily?