What to use for black out blinds

[InceyWinceySpidy]

We have DTwins, age 3, and find it impossible to keep their room dark.

They are impossible. They make mischief with absolutely everything in their room, to the extent that internal wardrobe doors are screwed shut, and all furniture bar their beds and a screwed to the wall shelving unit, have had to be removed.

They need a very dark room to sleep well. They have two double windows, pretty standard sized, over which are black out curtains, which they swing on and pull down regularly. Even when up properly, the room is still very bright with the sun hitting their room directly and lighting up the edges of the curtains.

The opaque film you can apply to the window worked a treat, until they worked out if one gave the other a leg up, they could pick at a corner until there was enough to grab and rip it off. They did this every night until we gave up applying.

Blinds, they would just do the same, help each other reach it then pull on the bottom until it broke.

What can we do that will be completely fiddle proof please?

Obviously a bit trickier (and makes the room dark permanently) but is there any way to put the blackout film on the outside of the windows?

Cassetted black out blinds? I don’t know how old the twins are but you need a degree of fine motor skills to open them and they are truly black out - we had them on an east facing bedroom.

In the nicest way I think this is a behavioural issue not a blinds issue!

Why are they so badly behaved? I have two kids and have never known them to break things on purpose!!!

We have Bloc Out blinds which make the room pitch black. They're blinds with runners down the sides of the windows so they block any light at the sides too. We have them in both DDs' rooms and they are brilliant. The room is totally black even at 7pm in summer!

Oh I just saw that they would break blinds. These ones aren't overly easy to break but honestly unless there are additional needs, I would be coming down on that kind of behaviour very hard. Deliberately breaking things at the age of 3 is definitely not on.

Might be easier if they didn’t share a room?! Is there enough space to separate them?

I don’t think blinds are the problem here.

Do they have additional needs? Otherwise this behaviour is extreme.

When we rented between houses, we used black bin bags in our youngest's room.

The man fitting our blinds in our next house said black bin bags were actually better than blackout blinds as there were no gaps.

Not ideal but does the trick.

Nothing is unbreakable if your kids are determined to break it. Im afraid I think you need to sort out their behaviour at bedtime first. Then blackout film or blinds. You can get a pelmet fitted to stop light leakage at the top.

Suffocation risk

As per pp...it's not the blinds that are the problem here...

Twins are not the same as 2 children. If I had a pound for every ignorant mummy who tried "ohhhh, I know, there's only 18mths between my two" I'd be rivalling Bezos. They aren't deliberately breaking to be destructive. They wake as soon as it gets the tiniest bit lighter. Sometimes 4am, and the first we know of anything being pulled down, is a bang at 4am as they're trying to let more light in. But many thanks on your comments on the aspect you have no experience of.... (and yes, we do have other DC, non twins, and strangely, this wasn't an issue with them)

@Batbatbatty we have put something on the outside as a temporary measure, but it's an absolute mess and looks terrible from the garden.

I wondered if there was anything like indoor shutters that would fit in the recess.

@Trixibella I do think the problem would be eradicated if they were in separate rooms, but they absolutely love being in with each other, and they won't be little enough to share for much longer. They read stories to each other and lay in bed singing. They'd truly miss each other, and as it is, they go to bed at 6.30 without issue.

They are just a pain in the ass with everything in their room They work together and slowly push their beds up to things, then they'll bend the mattress in half between them, and one will lay on it, while the other uses the additional height to reach what they need. We've had to cable tie the underneath of the mattress to their beds to stop this. You have to be partly impressed with the ingenuity and working together... but at 3, they don't recognise the dangers in what they do, so bloody everything has to come out. Even as tinies, they worked out, that together, they could lift their playpen and move around the room.

Chest of drawers? 4ft tall and they managed to scale it and leap off the top. So it has to go before someone breaks a leg. Because whilst it's great fun, they're 3 and don't know it's a bad idea. Must be additional needs eh...

Any other actually helpful ideas for the windows?...

We used something like this in our daughter's nursery but wouldn't do it in a rental fwiw. Basically self adhesive velcro line up wall (the straighter then better) then velcro along the edge of curtain and they stick together. Not sure how you get the velcro off as when I tried to adjust a bit it ended up pulling the plaster off the wall so need to get right the first time. Then spare dark sheet stuffed along the top of the curtains.

Not sure if your twins might just pull it off but it's pretty tough.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LZHOO-Adhesive-Double-Sided-Sticky/dp/B07BTG72K3/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?crid=1OFCAW9N9GJT4&keywords=velcro+tape+self+adhesive&qid=1684795121&sprefix=velcro+%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRm&psc=1

@Ihatewinding you may well be on to something here! If I made a panel of blackout fabric the same size as the window, then put that velcro around the window frame, then at least if they do pull it off, they can't do much damage with it and it's easy to put back up.

That's the problem with the blackout film, it takes forever to position and stick down. So when they peel it off, it takes me half an hour to re-fit it. We can't fit it on the outside, as it's water activated adhesive.

My only concern is how I'd attach it to the pvc window frame. If it was superglued on, that's the window ruined forever isn't it?

In Europe they have shutters that attach to the outside of the house. I love them as so dark.
However I would put them in separate rooms for now as well. Mine shared a room up until they were 11 so plenty of time. I'd explain to them that until their old enough not to break things on purpose they needed to be separate.

As a temporary measure, if you mix black paint with washing up liquid and paint the windows that will blacken them. The washing up mixture makes it easier to wash off when you want to. It means they'll need lights on in the daytime, as you can't remove it everyday, but it works.

I had pull down black out blinds. Mine also came into me when the woke then went back to sleep in my bed

On the upside, they sound like they’re going to run the world together when they grow up. Mrs Thatcher didn’t need sleep either!

I don't know about parenting twins. But I'd try spending a few evenings sitting outside the room and telling them off every time they mess with something. Or taking turns sending one up to bed first without the other, in the hope that one would be asleep or sleepy by the time the other one came up.

You could try a travel blackout blind with suckers, but only put it up when they're asleep. Won't make it dark at bedtime but should help with early light. If they pull it down in the morning then so be it.

Like some others here, I made blackout panels for DS1's room - really thick blackout material, velcro sewn on one side of the panel, stuck on the window frame on the other. His room was insanely sunny, and the window was almost 2m high (high ceilinged 1930's appartement) and the blinds made it completely dark. It won't solve the mischief making, but it would atop them damaging anything when they opened the blind....

What did you stick it to the frame with please? And did it ruin the frame when you removed it?

The going to bed isn't an issue. It's the other end when they wake up. So, they go to bed at 6.30 and fall asleep by 6.45 no problems. But in the winter, they naturally sleep until around 7, which is the amount of sleep they need (certainly boy twin needs that much) but she wakes up most nights and fidgets about 4am. When it's winter, she can't make anything light, so she doesn't even try and goes back to sleep. In the summer, she knows that there is light outside so she gets up, wakes up her sidekick and they get to work on making their room light so they can play.

If we could stop her, it would resolve it all. He only wakes because of her waking him, he could sleep through a disco.

I'd rather they continued to share, this is the only negative aspect, and there are many positives.

@InceyWinceySpidy I used sticky velcro - stuck one side to the window frame, the other to the fabric panel, and then I sewed it onto the fabric to be double sure it wouldn't come off. The windows were UVPC but the velcro stuck quite hard to them. I used a scraper to get it off and then nail varnish removed to clean the glue residue (windows were white, so it couldn't take any colour off).