Getting baby to nap with 3 year old around

[FinnMcMissile]

Can anyone give me any tips on this? I have a 5 month old DD and 3.5 year DS. Two days I week I look after them both by myself, and have to put DD down for naps while DS is around. Usually I feed her to sleep, but this is starting to take longer than it used to. She usually has 4 short naps a day, although one or two will be while we are out eg. in sling, pram or car. I have been using TV for DS when necessary, but sometimes he still follows me upstairs and disturbs DD. I also feel guilty for leaving him watching TV for increasingly longer periods of time.

What is the problem?

I have a very noisy 2 year old and a 6 month old. I put baby to sleep in the pram in the hall and put a good tv programme on while I rock him to sleep, I leave the door a bit open and keep checking baby. Then I call it our snuggle time and encourage us to sit quiet and watch a nice programme. Just do what you need to do, don’t worry to much about ‘routines’ as such when you have both. Good luck.

Thanks cake.

Basil the problem is that I am disappearing upstairs with baby for increasing periods of time. In theory, it would be ok to put TV on 3 times a day for DS, if he would just watch one programme and then we could switch it off. But he usually wants to binge watch a show for an hour or more, or watch a film. Switching it off earlier means he has a tantrum and I don't want to deal with that 3 times a day.

Alternatively I can just leave him to play, but inevitably he will follow me upstairs and make so much noise that DD can't fall asleep, or he will call me from downstairs because he can't find something he needs etc.

Maybe there is no perfect solution anyway. At least it is just 2 days a week.

Just let him watch a film and have quiet time. It’s not going to hurt and it’s good for everyone to have down time in the day.