Recently moved 4 and 5 year old to the same room and it’s going terribly. Help!
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Anonymous
This! The entire thread is misguided at best. When a 4 or 5 year old wakes up, a parent needs to wake up, whether that's 4:30, 5:30, 6:30am or whatever. If you don't want them to wake up that early, look into the causes: going to bed too early? too late? hungry? hearing brother stirring? Can the awake brother take a book and bring it to a mattress next to your bed to read quietly? Expect this to fail at least 50% of the time... |
Anonymous
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Thank you everyone. You’ve given us a lot to think about.
We are addressing the early wake ups. Lots of ideas for behavior. You’re right: it’s too long for them to wait, and we have to suck it up and wake up also. |
Anonymous
If you are asking whether you can lock the ipad until a set time, the answer is yes. Go to Settings -> General -> Screentime -> Downtime |
Anonymous
Have you thought of wearing them out more so they don't wake up early? Giving them a later bedtime? |
Anonymous
No, I'm asking if checking out of parenting in this way is socially acceptable. I limit my kids to less than an hour of screentime a day, when I need to keep them occupied so I can cook dinner. I'd love to just throw them an iPad and sleep in every morning but I was under the impression that it's bad for their development. |
Anonymous
Yes, you're allowed to do this. Jeez, didn't we all grow up watching cartoons on the morning? |
Anonymous
Socially acceptable meaning what? No one is going to report you to CPS for giving your kids too much screen time, and plenty of parents do not limit screen time to an hour a day (or at all). More screen time is not ideal, but it's probably not going to hurt your children as long as they are engaging with the world in other ways most of the time, and sometimes you just need to do whatever preserves your sanity. But yeah, some people will judge you for it because some people are judgmental AF about other people's parenting. |
Anonymous
| Put good toys in the room. They’ll play. |
Anonymous
I’m the PP with the Netflix trick. “Allowed”? People on here will definitely judge you. But if I’m going to let my kids watch an hour or 90 minutes of cartoons a day I’d rather do it in a way that lets me sleep. |
Anonymous
| Also I sometimes let them watch way more than an hour and some days there’s none. |
jsmith123
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| OP we just moved our kids (3 & 6) into the same room. The 6 year old wakes up earlier than the 3 year old. We've instructed him to tiptoe out into his old room where he can quietly read or play. Most days it works. Some days they just end up both waking up at the same time and there's not much we can do about it. |
Anonymous
| Why is putting them back in separate rooms not an option? Seems simple. |
Anonymous
+1, this. We'd always have a parent get up. Or, if one parent was traveling, kid would come into bed with an iPad or kindle and stay with parent/sleeping and knew not to get off the bed without waking the parent. |
Anonymous
Maybe it’s not the best. But this idea that parenting is matter of constantly optimizing your child’s development is literally driving women over the edge. See all the threads with the women who say they cry every day. Makes me sad. |
Anonymous
| I can’t understand what possessed you to give in to them wanting to share a room. It would be different if it were a necessity but you say it was their request. I would have done a trial run and when it failed I would have bagged the whole idea. I don’t eff around with sleep. |