How to Move a Toddler to a Sibling's Bedroom to Get to Sleep
Families with more than one child inevitably come to a decision point about sibling room sharing. If your toddler has difficulty sleeping at night, sharing a room with a sibling can actually help her. Though arguments will eventually arise between siblings who share a room, each child will also benefit from this arrangement in a variety of ways. If you take a few simple steps to ease the transition, you can help your toddler move to a sibling's room successfully.
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Instructions
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Move a Toddler to a Sibling's Bedroom
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Promote the move. Discuss the transition to a shared bedroom with both children involved, and talk mostly about the positive aspects (they won't be alone at night, they'll get to spend more time together, they may even gain a playroom in the house as the result of sharing a bedroom). This will enable both children to get excited about the move rather than dread it.
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Redecorate the room. Involve both children in a plan for decorating the room now that it will have two beds in it; let the children choose a decorating theme, new bedspreads or a new wall color. This will give both kids ownership of the room and act as an incentive for a successful move.
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Adapt your bedtime routines. If each child in the room will have a separate bedtime, you may need to alter the way you put your children to sleep. For example, you may put the younger child to bed first, and the older child later. Perform the main parts of the older sibling's bedtime routine (song, story, talking time) in a separate room so he can go to bed in silence and avoid waking his younger sibling. In this situation, be prepared to remind the older child to be quiet as he enters the shared bedroom.
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Play music at night. A music player, a radio, or a white noise machine in the bedroom can help each child remain asleep. If one child wakes in the middle of the night, the music or white noise can help lull her back to sleep without disturbing the other child. Sharing a room in and of itself can also help the children stay asleep, because they won't have to be afraid of being alone at nighttime anymore. A sleeping sibling's rhythmic breathing can be very reassuring to a child.
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Have a backup plan. Just in case the room-sharing experiment fails miserably (the older sibling resists her new lack of privacy or the younger one gets up frequently and disturbs her sister's sleep patterns), have a backup plan that you can use in the short or long term. If minor sleep interruptions occur on occasion, try keeping a cot or a sleeping bag in another area of the house for the noisy sibling to move to when he wakes up at night. If quarrels prove to be a continuous problem, consider converting another area of your home (office, playroom or basement) into an extra bedroom to separate the siblings again. This way you won't ruin their sibling relationship over a shared bedroom space argument.
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Tips & Warnings
Make the transition to a new bed easier for your toddler by letting him sleep in it for short periods at nap time before moving to an all-night arrangement.
Some toys your older child owns may not be safe for your toddler. Plan to move these toys out of the room or store them out of reach when the toddler moves into her new room.
