LJ and Max share a room and so do Will and Weston. We constantly get asked how we make this happen….and the answer is fairly simple….we don’t give them any other choice 🙂
Sharing a room is something that most people do at some point in their lives and we personally believe that it’s a really helpful skill to learn! I actually shared a room with my sister growing up and it provided a wealth of laughable memories. Granted….it wasn’t always easy….I distinctly remember taking masking tape and dividing the room in half. We even split the ceiling fan 🙂 And yes, sometimes those canopy beds looked less beautiful bedroom and more brutal battlefield….although my sister often won as she was loads tougher and never afraid to throw a punch. #beastmodelori
But battles aside, it helped me later in life….learning personal space and respecting other people’s possessions, being able to sleep under a variety of conditions, and how to compromise. And since it is a super-popular question, I thought I would explain some tips on how we transition from the stage where we have a baby in the parent’s room or nursery to sharing a room with a sibling.
TIP #1 – Transition the kids, transition the space
When our big boys transitioned to sharing a room they were a little older compared to the ages that we started Max & LJ….also, it went from being Will’s room to being BOTH their rooms….so we felt like the most appropriate way to handle the new arrangement was with a completely new look in the room….as in, we redecorated. This made it feel different to both boys and even though I made the majority of decoration decisions (rug, bedding, curtains, furniture), the boys got to say what they wanted on the walls. This way the kids can get excited about a new room and BOTH children are being introduced into a new space vs one kid being a host.
TIP #2 – Give kids individual spaces within the room
Each of our kids gets their own beds, their own drawers, even their own shelves on the bookshelf. They get to choose what art is on their wall and get to put whatever animal or pillow or whatever on their bed. I think that making this single space contain individual spaces is really important to teach that they have freedom in this room but also need to remember its not all theirs so they need to respect their roommate. Nana also gave the boys ‘treasure boxes’ which are wooden boxes with lids that are where the boys can put their individual keepsakes that they don’t want out. This gives them a special spot to stash little prizes, notes or presents for the other roommate and teaches the kids privacy.
TIP #3 – Create the same conditions
When sharing a room, opinions play a strong role. Temperature, light, noise, even side of the room….it all is of life-changing importance to these little personalities and it all is a matter of opinion. We decided early on that all our kids would sleep with the same noise maker….it blocks out our binge-watching Stranger Things 2….and that even when we travel, we bring it with us. All the kids have the same night light….as well as each kid having their own lovie. Creating all the same sleep conditions makes traveling easier and it also makes it a breeze when we transition from room to room as ALL of those things easily move.
TIP #4 – Get the toys out
Our bedrooms are treated as sleeping spaces. The boys don’t play in their rooms because we took all the toys out. We are really lucky to have a play space downstairs so obviously this can’t work for everyone but it works for us. I think it was very helpful in transitioning the kids to sharing a room because there isn’t a Spiderman plush or a Matchbox car for them to play with or fight over….they are in there to SLEEP. This simple task of getting the toys out is another step in making this zone more relaxing.
TIP #5 – Create a routine
For all our little boys, we do the same routine. After the bath, we get jammies on and change diapers/put on pull ups. The kids brush their teeth and we let LJ and Max pick out a book. Then we prep the room (turn on fans, sound machines, dim lights, turn on night lights) and sit down with the kids in our lap. We read each of the books and then sing slow songs (like twinkle twinkle or their name songs). Finally we say prayers before carrying them to bed. When we lay them down, we pull their blankets up but all touching stops at that point. We realized that any touching the kid is just more stimulation….that we DON’T want them getting used to us comforting them with touch….that we want them to find comfort in their lovies. This routine usually works because it is the same routine we did before they slept together. We also say the same thing….”It’s time to go to sleep.” This is what we call the ‘cue words’. This cues them into exactly what they are supposed to do.
TIP #6 – Be attentive
There are always times of sleep regression, sick nights or just plain restlessness. It’s gonna happen when one kid is asleep and the other one decides it’s a great time to scream at the top of their lungs. We feel like it’s important to always be attentive….not because they share a room and can ruin the other kids sleep….but because they are children who need security in your presence. We always go in….we don’t let them cry it out alone. When we go into the room, we do not turn on the light (there is plenty of visibility with a nightlight and our phones) but first evaluate the situation (some are special situations but most are just a kid wanting their own way so that’s what I’m talking about here….you as a parent should know the difference) and then place our hand on their back or tummy and say “It’s ok. It’s time to go to sleep.” We don’t pick up, we don’t take them out of the crib. Then we sit in the room and usually scroll Instagram. 99% of the time, they stop crying when we go into the room and lay back down. That other 1% of the time, they are testing us. Our policy is to stay calm and consistent. I say that like it’s easy….it’s not. But it’s key. They sometimes cry a little longer….but remember, I already evaluated to ensure they aren’t sick or hurt…usually they are just being willful. Of course, all parents are different. You get to decide what level of comfort to provide your kids….we do the hand on and single sentence and presence. You can do more but remember that you are creating a routine and changing that routine can be stimulating or upsetting to the kid.
If our kid is sick, we react completely differently because it’s a completely different situation. If a child threw up or messed the bed, we remove them from the bed and take them to the bathroom to clean them up. The other parent is on ‘bed duty’….pulling the extra crib mattress out from under our bed and making a spot for them to sleep in our room and cleaning up the dirty bedding. Then we do the entire routine again for them to go to sleep in their new floor bed.
We aren’t experts at this but we have found that consistency and comfort are two main components of our sleep situation. It may not be easy (we definitely aren’t drop em and go!) but it’s something that we have chosen to do and the boys all seem to like the setup. Honestly the one thing that makes me sad is that Ella won’t be able to experience the same type of sleeping arrangement! It would be great for college dorm prep 🙂 Woah Katie….stop talking about college. Any other people out there with sharing-room tips? I’d love to hear them!
p.s. I know that any topic relating to kids can be controversial. Please be respectful to others as they share their comments and to us as every kid, every parent and every situation is different! We are all doing our very best 🙂
I’m currently pregnant with my first (ahh!) so although the sharing a room info isn’t relevant to me right now and I have no tips on that front, everything you mentioned about creating a consistent routine is such great advice! I hope we’ll be able to create a good routine with our little one when the time comes so that we’ll all be able to get some good sleep!
I agree with all of this. We have 3 boys in the same room because that’s the only choice we have at this point. We have a small 2 bedroom house and we’re expecting a surprise baby in a few months! :O Not sure where he or she will sleep at this point! 😀
They sure aren’t experts on respecting personal space (maybe because they just don’t have it!) but I know it’s good for them to learn to live with others.
This was a useful post! Thanks!
We’re awaiting Baby #3, and whichever gender it is, they will have to share with either older brother or sister when they get older. I have no tips and loved hearing yours though. However, I shared a room for 15 years with a younger sister. Though I do not have fond memories of sharing our room, I do remember when my older brother moved out for college, I took his room. And I loved the sense of having my own room. I know it sounds really selfish, but it wasn’t. It was the feeling that after years of sharing a room, I finally had my own, and I was extremely grateful for that tiny space. (Was it 9×9? Or 9×10?) I know room-sharing was not peaceful at our house. My mom reminds me often that she wasn’t sure my sister and I would survive each other. But I still hope to do it with my kids because no matter what the takeaways are, I believe there’s always a positive one. And in my case, lots of negative ones and missing clothes and broken stuff and ruined school work and little sister always being “invited” to my sleepovers
GRRRLLLLL… I think it is fabulous that your kids share a room! For me, sharing a room (and even a bed) with my sister was sometimes tough when we were growing up. (Okay, a lot of times it was tough.) But I believe that we wouldn’t be near as close now without having shared that experience. Not to mention that I was able to develop a sense of respect for others’ space and things. Trust me, I think you are doing your kids a favor.
Thanks so much for this post! We are getting ready to have our second, and while the baby will be in our room for the first few months, we know eventually our kiddos will share! Do you have tips or suggestions for what to do when transitioning from a crib to a bigger bed? Our son is only 19 months old right now, but he is starting to get ideas about climbing out, and we’d like to be consistent with dealing with that, as well as with how we treat him when he moves to the bigger bed (but hopefully that won’t be for a long while!) Thanks again, and thank you for your blog posts, they are great to read!
Love these tips!!! We are wanting to transition our two boys to sharing sometime in the future and you bring up a lot of good points. I completely agree with you on the routine and the night crying. We did the exact same methods and our boys both sleep like a DREAM now because we helped them learn to go and stay asleep on their own. Thanks for sharing!
We do the noodle trick! We put a swim noodle under the fitted sheet and then they don’t roll out (although I am still paranoid and put a million pillows next them the first few weeks). And as for the climbing out thing, we transition to a big boy bed at that point usually when they climb out….because the danger is in the fall, not them being out.
xo – kb
I have a protector sheet for the mattress (made with tencel fabric, which is “transpirable”) so I can change the bedding including a clean protector and the kid sleeps in his own crib/bed. Honestly, I do not have space for an extra mattress in my bedroom
My girls will share a room and the boy will have his own room, so all your tips are welcome
I think about our girls sharing a room just because I think it would make them super close to each other, and then having a shared “do stuff” room, like homework, play, etc. Right now they have their own spaces. Not sure what our plan will be. All I know is, I love that my almost 3 year old still has no desire to remove the front wall of her crib. Paranoid about sleep walking! LOL Whenever she asks, we have the toddler rail ready and waiting. I think my 1 year old will want to sleep in a big girl bed starting tomorrow. LOL
Our 5 year old loves to test us at night time. We have our set routine, but then he usually calls out for us from his room to comeback in and then asks us the most random questions. You can tell I have been fed up with this some nights when a sheet from daycare that asks them questions to fill in says “What does your Mommy say to you at night?” and you expect the response to be something like Love you, or Night Night. But no, his response was “Go to sleep!” 😛
My oldest daughter is 10 years older than her sisters. The younger two are only 2 1/2 years apart. The younger two shared a room until the older one went to college. Middle moved into Big’s old room…for about a week…then Middle and Little decided to make one room a play room and the other room a sleeping room. They ended up sharing two rooms! It stayed like that until Middle started High School. Now they still have “sleepovers” with eachother but did need bigger beds!
Love this!! We plan to have our kiddos share rooms at some point along the way. ( when we have more… we just have 2 babes right now) It’s awesome to hear advice!
Both my husband and I had to share a room with siblings. Our boys never did because they are 4 years apart and at such different stages but I still think it would’ve been so good for them. Y’all are rockstar parents–I totally agree with the consistency and comfort motto. We followed pretty much the same routine and both our boys turned out to be fabulous sleepers (now 11 and almost 15! Sniff!) I love these posts!
Where are those blue curtains with the fringe from, love those!
Great post and advice. Two of our three girls share a room and its mostly good:> Two questions for you and fellow readers, you mentioned you look at Instagram while being in the room; we never bring a phone into their bedrooms, it’s way too distracting for our kids…how do you handle that? don’t they want to look too? isn’t it bright?
Second question, how do you deal with say Will having school reading assignments? Our older two have specific books to read from school and since our girls are all three years apart, the other girl is totally not interested. So, we have to do three different bedtime routines with reading different books and with two parents, that’s hard and takes two hours. Any tips? TIA!
At what age did you move LJ and Max together? My older daughter is 3 and younger is 8 months. We want to start thinking sharing a room soon. Did you move the kid from crib straight to twin bed and not the toddler bed first?
Reading this makes me a bit sad my 2 won’t ever share a room. I mean, they certainly could have at one point I think, when our daughter was 6 and our son was born. And looking back, I wonder if it would have helped both of their sleep back then. She went through major sleep issues for quite a few years that I’m convinced stem from her waking in the morning many times in the first few years of our son’s life, only to find grandma/grandpa at the house and us gone….we had to take our son to the ER many, many times those first few years of his life (breathing problems). But anyway, now she’s 14 and he’s almost 8 so, yeah….there is NO sharing – ha!! Oh well….you’re doing it right it sounds like!
Max was ten months and LJ was two when they started. And we have done both….Will went from crib to his converted crib (which is close to a toddler bed) to a twin and Weston went directly to a twin. LJ and Max are both still in cribs.
xo – kb
LJ is three and he is very firmly set on not being out of a crib either. I am fine with it! I don’t know a single 12 year old that sleeps in a crib so to each their own 🙂
xo – kb
hahaha!
xo – kb
Our rocker is on the other side of the room and so they can’t see the screen unless they were out of bed. We also do the low light adjustment so that it isn’t too bright. As for the reading assignments, Will reads and does his homework first thing when he gets home because otherwise we forget. I would have the older one help the middle one with her reading assignment at another time (since the younger one usually has books that take less time)…say at breakfast time or when you are in the car. Then have the middle one included with her older sister when its nighttime. I would also try to do the youngest bed routine first…maybe starting a little earlier so that it is feasible for one parent to do all three girls.
xo – kb
I made them! Here is the post all about them 🙂
xo – kb
I have two boys 20 months apart (ages 3 and 1). We pretty much do the exact same routines as you and it has worked great for us too. I was very nervous about the transition to a shared room. It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. It took a few months before I was convinced it would be ok. We love it now. A few other tips for any of you moms with toddler/infant room sharers –
– Wait until baby is *mostly* sleeping through the night. Try to get them going to bed at the same time before moving into the same room.
– Configure the room so that they can’t easily see each other when in bed/crib.
– We keep a pack n play handy in another room for those nights when one is coughing or having a bad night. (Love the idea of the crib mattress under our bed.) I don’t even try to do naps in the same room. Naps are hard enough to come by as it is! If their naps overlap, one goes in the pack n play in our walk in closet with his lovie and white noise.
-Keep extra set of pjs, sheets and diapers outside of their room so you don’t have to make a bunch of noise in the middle of the night emergencies.
Good luck to you mamas!
Our 2 girls share a room. They actually wanted to! We had them separate and no one was sleeping. Since they joined forces, everyone gets more sleep. It’s helpful for vacations and things. I never shared a room growing up and I think the transitions to college and being married were super hard. I find your take on toys in the bedroom really interesting. Hadn’t thought of that before. May need to think about doing the same thing with ours.
Love this post! Did you notice any differences between the ages Will and Weston started sharing a room, and when Max and LJ started?
Also, I remember Sherry and John started Clara in her own room very early on to get her used to that environment. Did you notice a shift in sleeping patterns when your littles moved from your room to a sibling room?
I’ve got a 5 year too, and you can tell that the gears in their heads just take forever to stop spinning.
Good luck ! When our daughter went to full-day kindergarten in August she was just so exhausted that it has dwindled to like 2 questions every other night.
Lots of great tips. Having a routine and being consistent is key. Our girls share a room and they are 13 and 7 and don’t really like it but we have no other choice. They didn’t start sharing until a couple of years ago. I think if they grew up that way, things might be different. The only major problem we run into is that my oldest daughter loves to stay up to read and the 7 year old will fall asleep fast if it’s dark (but it’s not since my oldest is trying to read and so the younger one just yells at her to turn off the light). In that case we’ve found it easier to let the 7 yr old fall asleep in our bed so she’s not arguing with her sister and let the 13 yr old stay up to read. When we go to bed, then we transfer the 7 yr old to her bed. I guess we could have the 13 yr old read somewhere else but she prefers to read on her top bunk bed – it’s like her own private world up there.
I’ve also heard that kids who share a room together grow up to be closer with each other regardless of how they acted toward each other when they shared the room. It seems like your boys are already close with each other and I can totally see them being the protective big brothers to sweet little Ella.
Haha we just had our fourth this summer and though we have 3 bedrooms, they are VERY small. We ended up building a bunk bed to fit those child size mattresses from Ikea (they are the width of a crib mattress but about a foot longer)(we used Ana White plans and modified the size). We now have the 2 oldest in the bunk bed and #3 in a toddler bed all in the same room. The crib (which the baby doesnt even sleep in yet!) is in the other room. Now my bigger issue is drawer space! :/
I totally agree with you Katie about having a good bedtime routine and for no toys in the bedroom! We have 2 girls and 2 boys and I think they’ll share rooms at least until Jr high or maybe high school. I shared a room with my sisters growing up, but I’m the baby so by the time I was in high school, they had moved out and I had my own space, which I greatly appreciated 🙂
We have 3 boys who all share a room. We actually, took a walk out between two rooms so they have a huge bedroom. They are 11, 9, and 7. We plan to have them share as long as possible. In the whole sceme of things childhood is very short. We want them to have as many memories together as possible. I will say, their room is almost never clean and tidy. I’ve learned to be ok with that…kind of.
Great tips! My daughter (4) and son (2) share a room. When baby 3 comes, he’ll stay with us and then transition into their room after 6 months too. We have another room on our lower level but I don’t want to sleep on another floor away from them yet. (We plan on moving in the next few years and will give our daughter her own space at that time. )
I shared a room with my two sisters growing up, and while we had our share of typical sibling squabbles, it was such a comfort to me to have them nearby. When I got my own room for the first time as a junior in college, I was actually lonely!
I’ve always admired your shared kid spaces, and I love the idea of redecorating with input from both kids to ease the transition. I have a boy and a girl, so it will be necessary for them to have their own spaces in the future, but for now they both tell me they love sharing!
I love your suggestions on consistency. We’re always working to keep our bed time consistent and not too long. Our daughter (6) and son (3) have shared a room since he was 5 months. They learned quickly to sleep through each other’s noise; even sleep training and an ambulance visit when our son had croup. I think they’ll have positive memories. Oh, I love those rare days they wake up and play happily together- warms my heart.
No not really. I think our little ones were too little to realize what exactly was happening. Will was a solid sleeper….once he was out, he was out…so he never really had issues.
xo – kb
I’m a mom of 5 boys and My older two (14&13) and middle two (7&6) share rooms
I second absolutely everything you’ve said in this post!!
I’d love to see a picture of the ” treasure boxes ” if you’re willing to share, I think that would be something super fun to have SANTA bring this year
Love the tips! My girls are 6 and 3, and they are getting bunk beds for christmas and will transition into sharing a room. I hope they love it! And I hope it is an easy transition to make. We currently use the same white noise maker in all of our bedrooms, so that will be consistent. So, we’ll see how it goes!