Siblings sharing a room- how??

[Stepiver]

Hi all- just after some advice and others’ experiences.

I have a 6 year old and a 9 month old. Currently I co-sleep with our 9 month old in my bed and my husband sleeps in bed with my 6 year old. (We’ve done that since birth as the baby wakes so much!) Eventually the children (both boys) will have to share a room as we only have a 2 bed house.

I just cannot get my head around how this will work? Our 9 month old is a terrible sleeper and wakes a lot. My 6yo wakes him up a lot as it is by being generally loud in his bedroom 😂 so how does it work when they share a room? I was planning to make the move when the baby is 12-18 months ish. Has anyone done this successfully?

The baby goes to bed at 7 and our 6yo goes at 8 but surely he’ll just wake the baby up when he goes to bed? Any suggestions?! TIA ♥️

I have 2 that share a room. Ill be honest it can be hard and not ideal. I think a lot of it is how well your children sleep.
Mine are ok once they are asleep so what we do is one starts off in our bed and gets moved to their own bed later in the night. They are able to go back to sleep quickly again.
They can wake each other up and get grumpy etc. Or they struggle to fall asleep if the other one is making noise.
Its not ideal but it is working for us at the moment.
We have used ear defenders at times but Mine are older (7 and 10) and we removed them when we go to bed, however have found that they put them back on throughout the night on ooccasions.

I know some that share with no issues whatsoever.
I think you will need to find your own system that works for you.

Ours have separate rooms most of the time, but share when we’re away.

It’s fine. Do all of the big one’s bedtime routine (stories, PJs etc), and he only goes into the ro with the little one when he’s really ready for sleep.

Once kids are asleep they tend to sleep really deeply, so you’d be surprised how little they wake up for a baby (and hopefully your little one will wake less by then, too).

In the morning, though, expect them both to be up as soon as the earliest one wakes.

We have 3 in a (small) 3 bed so two of ours will need to share too. However our youngest is 12m and a horrendous sleeper. His frequent night time hysterics are so bad they often wake up the 7yo even tho they sleep at the opposite end of the house. Then the 4yo wakes at least once a night for the toilet but sometimes more and them calling for us via their monitor often wakes the baby up too.

Basically unless the baby starts to sleep much better I really can't see how it will work. Our elder two moved to their own rooms at about 1.5 but I'm thinking our youngest will be with us longer if their sleep doesn't improve. Alternatively we do have the luxury of having the 7 and 4yo share initially but they are opposite sex so that could only be a temporary solution so quite a lot of messing about.

My two share but they're much closer in age (7 and 5). They used to have their own room but didn't like sleeping alone.

In your case I would suggest waiting til the baby sleeps through, and maybe doing the bedtime routine with your eldest elsewhere so the eldest only goes to the bedroom to sleep.

I was just sat thinking the same thing!

I have two girls and until we find a new house we also live in a 2 bed.. We plan on moving to something bigger when we find somewhere we like but until then the girls will have to share.

My eldest is almost 3 and she’s an amazing sleeper, my 1 year old doesn’t know what sleep is and i don’t know how it is ever going to work 😂

My eldest goes to sleep every night in my bed and when she’s asleep she gets put in her bed where she stays until the next morning.. my 1 year old is up alllll the time! I think im going to have to keep my little girl in with us until she sleeps better because if i tried to move her any time soon she will absolutely disturb my eldest..

I assume time will tell. You will know when to make the move.

You will run into more difficulty when the children are growing. I was 7 years older than my sister and we had to share a bedroom (1960s). Think small two-up-two-down terraced house. I loathed the lack of privacy, My sister used to steal my clothes and in retaliation I beat her up. There was nothing my parents could have done to divide the room as it was too small. There was then none of the modular units or room dividers you can buy today.