Help with sleeping arrangement?

Question

I have a 4 and 2 yr old girls sleeping in the same room but all they do is holler and scream to go to bed and through out the nite any suggestions

Answer 1

Don't separate the girls! It will take awhile, but you are going to have to reinforce the discipline needed here. You are going to be plenty busy enforcing what needs to be completed. It will take some time, but it can be done. Take your choice of action. Implement your plan. And be consistent. I was told by my daughter who is now over 25, that her best memories were sharing a bedroom and all the chaos that went along with it., with her siblings. She plans on her children sharing a room because of the bonding that occurred in those early years. Sometimes more space given, is like running away from your problem and not learning to settle them. Just be patient.

Answer 2

Yep, The answer is to seperate them.They are getting attention from each other and keeping each other up. If you don't have another room, have one sleep on the couch, etc. Hopefully, they won't like being seperated and will learn that they need to be quiet if they are together in the same room.
We used to play quiet games before bed. A parent would read a story, talk to the kids for a few minutes, tell each child they had one more chance to say anything that they wanted and then after that the quiet game started. If they were quiet the whole night........they would get a prize...........something small.

Answer 3

This is a tough one. It would not solve the problem, long term, to separate them. You might try talking to each one individually when things are calm and ask what is wrong. The four-year old will probably give you a pretty accurate description of the real problem is if you listen carefully and fill-in-the-blanks with what the two-year old says. There might be a simple problem like they are scared of something and you can check for monsters before going to bed and assure each girl that her room is safe. If it is a space issue, they may just need to learn how to share again. Discipline may be your answer (not spanking necessarily). Take something away that means something to each of them each time they scream at each other. Tell them that they can have it back when they have stopped screaming at each other. I would wait at least a week before I gave it back to them. Eventually, they will realize their behavior has consequences and earn their things back. A trick that I used with my cousins when they were younger was that the older one would "teach" the younger one how to go to sleep. Sometimes things like that work. You could have the older one "teach" the younger how to go to sleep quietly. Girls tend to want to help mother their younger siblings and want to help around the house. Giving a girl a project like this brings out this instinct and tends to calm a child. If this does not work, then you might talk to a doctor or even a psychiatrist and have them talk to the girls. There might be a deeper problem or a sleeping disorder that could be part of the cause.

Answer 4

just seperate them and tell them that because they fight the sleeping arrangements are changing. My 2 older kids technically have seperate rooms, but most nights they go to one room and watch tv and fall asleep. We got tired of the fighting and seperated them only to have them realize that they wanted to be in the same room after all. However 2 and 4 are kind of young to have them wilfully go to bed and sleep.

Answer 5

If you have other rooms in the house that you're not going to be in... like if you're going to be in the living room but you have a family room or a guest room... tell them that if they continue to make noise they will be separated. Then if they continue, put one of them in another room, and hopefully make it an unpleasant experience.. no TV or radio on or anything.

Answer 6

We had the same problem with our boys. Nothing we tried worked so we ended up having to separate them into their own rooms.

Answer 7

if time outs don't work then a spanking is called for. One good swat on the but for each of them and tell them why you did it. Punishment is a good thing for raising children.

Answer 8

put them in seperate rooms
and give them a time out before bed

Answer 9

I agree with MollyWobbles,at least for a while.Give them time to think about being apart.

Answer 10

Don't spank them and tell them to go to sleep. You should just accept they have control and this is only the beginning.