getting them to sleep in the same room?

These days, getting them to take a nap is pretty hit & miss. I almost have to totally wear them out to get them to sleep in the same room. If I separate them & put one on my bed, then they fall asleep much faster. However, I usually use nap time to clean the house & fold laundry and my bed is usually the folding table.

Last night, they kept each other up til 10 pm! At what point do you say enough's enough & time to have separate rooms? We have a 3 bedroom house & the 3rd bedroom right now is our office/spare bed. So it'd be a major underhauling to turn it into a kids' room. I don't like to have them nap in the office b/c I don't want them touching the computer.

Any tips?

 

My idea wasn't popular with my pediatrician, but it SAVED MY SANITY and BEDTIME!!!

Give up NAPS!!!! OR...LIMIT them! Give them "down time" in their room. If they don't sleep, so be it!

What time is bedtime? I'm betting you can get them down earlier if they don't nap! :hug:

 

Ours are in the same room for bed, separate for naps (one naps and the other does quiet time). We use a blackout shade and a noise machine. They are pretty tired so they cant see anything, and they cant hear each other unless they are really loud----so they are usually asleep w/30 min or less. At times they get rowdy, but the loss of 'friends' (stuffed toys) often nips that in the bud. The darkness is a key factor for us. When we travel and no dark room= no sleep until it is dark out.

We also have bed rules, a very predictable routine, and set bedtime.

 

Ours still share a room, but are separated for naps. Sometimes they keep each other up quite late (10ish), but then they even themselves out by napping well the following day.

We have white noise machines in all the bedrooms and use them at nap times as well. We don't do anything with the blinds though. Sometimes it's really bright, other times it's rather dark.

Can you do laundry on the kitchen table and have the piles ready to be put away after naps? That's what I have to do.

I don't think my boys will have separate bedrooms unless/until they ask for it. I don't see that possibility happening for quite a while since they aren't quite 4 yet. They don't really like being separated at naps at this point. However, when H1N1 swept through our house a couple weeks ago, Nathan asked to sleep by himself at bedtime because Andrew was screaming and crying and I'm pretty sure that was making Nathan's head hurt worse. That's the only time that's happened though.

 

Saved ours, too. With naps, bedtime is 10:00 or later, without, between 8:00 and 9:00.

 

I agree. Mine were not going to bed well, ever, around age 3. It would be at least 2 hours of trying to get them to sleep at night, every night. Since DH and I work FT, that pretty much shot our entire evening and we were getting nothing accomplished. So we skipped naps one Saturday and they went straight down without a peep at bedtime. We stopped naps then and there. Occasionally they still take one, but they normally just have quiet time where they get to watch a movie they pick. Seriously, giving up the nap was great!