Our older sons, now 6 and 8, have been sharing a bedroom since the little one was 5 months old. Though their nighttime whispers break my strict “NO TALKING” policy, I think that their relationship is stronger for it. [See From nursery to big boy room]
And then we had another baby.
First Sawyer slept in the room that was my office / our guest room / extra storage. Then we moved into a larger house so he could sleep in a windowless closet. [See Our very small nursery]
For the past few months, I’ve been wondering when we would throw them all together and see what might happen. I mean, why should the baby get his own room? Doesn’t he need to bond with the big boys? What could possibly go wrong?
As a first step, I started throwing the idea out there that once the school year was over, we would move the crib into “Brothers’ Room” and we’ll just go for it. Happily, I don’t have to worry about lack of sleep ruining their academic success for another two months.
How was bedtime?
Last night, we moved the crib in right after dinner. I read to the toddler in his old glider and put him in the new bedroom solo. He was knackered and fell asleep right away but we still gave him a few minutes grace period before ushering in his roommates.
Though the big boys wanted to all go to sleep at the same time, we figured this would be easiest all around. I still heard the Bigs whispering but quickly shushed them lest they wake the baby.
Overall, bedtime was a breeze. [See How we put our 3 kids to bed]
And what about overnight?
Truth be told, it was pretty good until morning. Holden woke up with night terrors at 10pm interrupting our belated Mad Men watching. Nobody else stirred. Sawyer woke up screaming “Want to play with toys!” and “I awake” around 4:30 and went back to sleep once Alec showed him it was still dark out.
Our definition of success is quiet until 7:00am but we’d probably be happy with 6:30. They were all up and making noise in the fives.
What’s the plan going forward?
Full steam ahead. The crib was a pain to disassemble and move so we’re gonna stick to the plan for at least a month before giving up and moving somebody out. In the meantime, I will tidy up the Brothers’ Room to move toys out of immediate view to the dozing toddler. [See Fit More Kids in a Room or Two kids in a room. Or not.]
Tell me if you’ve tried to get kids to share a room and how it went for you. I’ll take tips or just commiseration.
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