Recently moved 4 and 5 year old to the same room and it’s going terribly. Help!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My girls (7 and 5) have been sleeping in the same room since they were 4.5 and 2.5. The have the ok to wake up clock and the older wakes up earlier and iften wakes up the younger, but it’s usually 15 minutes earlier or less. We don’t care because they play mostly quietly and don’t bother the rest of the house. I think your issue is that they should play quietly instead of fighting and screaming. Perhaps you could makes sure they play a game and they are not loud about it. Instead of focusing on whose fault it is (who woke up who), you should punish/reward both if loud/quiet. I try not to put one child against the other (it happens anyway), but I try to punish both when they do “bad” together or reward both when they do “good” together.

The 5 year old had anxiety so it upsets him GREATLY and he gets very frustrated if the younger brother is loud or wakes him up, because DS1 is powerless to stop it and knows he’ll get in trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do they care about screens? I would say “if I hear any screaming or loud noises before 6:30 am then there’s no screens today, period. No tv, no iPad, no phone, etc. Then stick to it. The entire day, don’t fold.

Alternatively—you can give them a reward if they are quiet till 6:30. At that age I would make it pretty immediate for a few days (like a brand new matchbox car for each of them), and then make it more like a sticker chart reward for a few weeks.

Screens are always a good motivator in my house.

These are good ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They requested to share a room because they were scared and alone at night. Switching them back to different rooms isn’t an option. Please don’t suggest it.

This is also a question about behavior, not sleep. They wake up early, yes, but I want to focus on behavior and not sleep info.

We have charts up: sit quietly, wait for the green light, then play quietly until we come in. We rehearse and talk about it. There are NO toys in the room, just books. We have a “stop sign” on our door so they stop waking us up. It’s not a crazy amount of time for them to sit and wait. 15 minutes. They love to sit and read so this isn’t absurd for them.

The PROBLEM...
One child wakes up early and wakes up the other. It varies which boy wakes up day by day. We aren’t sure, and can’t get a clear answer. This results in someone barging upstairs “Bob woke me up!” “Bob was talking! Tom was talking!” They blame each other. This escalates to SCREAMING...if they don’t come get us, they just sit in the room and scream “go back to sleep!” And eventually start physically fighting.

We’ve tried threats: “if you wake up before the light is green and make noise then you lose a toy/time out, etc”. We have visual reminders. We talk to them: please don’t wake up your brother. Sit and wait quietly. No silly talk.

We beg. We plead.

They don’t listen to each other. If Tom asks Bob to stop talking and go back to sleep, he won’t. It just escalates.

We are absolutely at our wits end.

How do you manage this?! We are so tired of the screaming, and having terrible mornings is a terrible way to start the day.

It sounds like they are in prison. What a horrible
Way to treat children.

[Anonymous]

What they are doing works. It gets you up which is their goal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are expecting them to wake up and be quiet and have taken away all their toys to make sure they stay in their room quietly? Hello?!

Put some toys in there and say if you wake up early play quietly and try to not wake your brother up.

So we took out the toys because of the screaming. They would fight over the toys. Removing the toys takes away THAT screaming issue. They are super chill boys who happily sit and look at books for long periods of time, so expecting them to wake up and look at books together isn’t unrealistic.

Apparently, it is unrealistic. Buy two of the same toys so they don't fight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What they are doing works. It gets you up which is their goal.

Do you have a suggestion?

[Anonymous]

Pregame and give them control over this. Talk to them about what would and should happen if one of them woke up first. Then the other. Ask them what would make their morning better. And realize that expecting a 4 or 5 year old to sit quietly in a room with no toys while their constant companion sibling is sleeping is unrealistic. Why cant the one who is awake quietly get out of bed and go play somewhere else in the house?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pregame and give them control over this. Talk to them about what would and should happen if one of them woke up first. Then the other. Ask them what would make their morning better. And realize that expecting a 4 or 5 year old to sit quietly in a room with no toys while their constant companion sibling is sleeping is unrealistic. Why cant the one who is awake quietly get out of bed and go play somewhere else in the house?

This is helpful.

We took away the toys because of the fighting. They have proven time and again that the books are enough, and have also proven that toys = fighting in the morning.

Asking them how to solve the morning problem is a good idea.

I also like what PP said about essentially sucking it up and the first person to wake up basically calls it, and they both can get up then, but they cannot wake US up at 5:30am

[Anonymous]

We used to let the kids watch Netflix cartoons on the iPad between when they woke up and when we woke up, but if they woke us we took the iPad away. Set time limits (we didn’t let it unlock until 6:15) if you don’t want them waking up early on purpose for screentime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pregame and give them control over this. Talk to them about what would and should happen if one of them woke up first. Then the other. Ask them what would make their morning better. And realize that expecting a 4 or 5 year old to sit quietly in a room with no toys while their constant companion sibling is sleeping is unrealistic. Why cant the one who is awake quietly get out of bed and go play somewhere else in the house?

This is helpful.

We took away the toys because of the fighting. They have proven time and again that the books are enough, and have also proven that toys = fighting in the morning.

Asking them how to solve the morning problem is a good idea.

I also like what PP said about essentially sucking it up and the first person to wake up basically calls it, and they both can get up then, but they cannot wake US up at 5:30am

The bolded seems like a reasonable solution if both are happily waking up early. But if you are putting one of them in the position of being woken up by sibling and then telling him to suck it up and deal but don't wake you up, that's pretty crappy.

[Anonymous]

The tricky thing is for that age is that time is still an abstract concept for them. Telling them to be quiet until 630am or no talking for 20 more minutes means nothing to them...you might as well talk to the wall.

Can you have 1st-kid-awake leave the room first thing? Put a toy basket in your room/living room/wherever to help lure Awake Kid out of the bedroom and away from sleeping brother.

Also, did they always awake super early ir did it start since they started sharing rooms?

It probably won't help much, but a white noise machine could muffle some of the playtime noise.

[Anonymous]

We sacrificed ourselves. First brother awake comes out to get a parent and let brother sleep.


You know that you can’t have one brother play quietly early in the morning and not wake his brother because you have tried it. A lot. You gave it good effort, so either everyone wakes when the first guy does or a parent gets up and let the other kid sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We sacrificed ourselves. First brother awake comes out to get a parent and let brother sleep.


You know that you can’t have one brother play quietly early in the morning and not wake his brother because you have tried it. A lot. You gave it good effort, so either everyone wakes when the first guy does or a parent gets up and let the other kid sleep.

Very good points

[Anonymous]

15 minutes is an eternity for a kid who just woke up.

Developmentally they just don't have the patience for what you're expecting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We used to let the kids watch Netflix cartoons on the iPad between when they woke up and when we woke up, but if they woke us we took the iPad away. Set time limits (we didn’t let it unlock until 6:15) if you don’t want them waking up early on purpose for screentime.

Wait, are we allowed to do this?