Three year old twins & bedtime

[OctaviusAce]

Just throwing this out there, to see if anyone else has experienced this (sure many twin mums & dads have!)

We have just-turned three year old ID twin boys. Like most threenagers, they can be boistrous, but all in all, their behaviour is OK during the day.

Bedtime is a strange one though. They share a room, and up to three months ago, would go to bed quite happily in the same room. Occasionally, we'd need to go up and put them back to bed, but usually, they would both drift off without a problem.

Recently, we're having a nightmare. If we put them to bed, there is no chance of them staying there. If we let them, they'd carry on playing, shouting, singing, play-fighting, emptying draws, etc. all night. For the last couple of months, we've had the rule that, "The next one we find out of bed, sleeps next door in the travel cot" (we carry the one in the travel cot back into the shared room before we go to bed). And, once this is done, they will both go to sleep.

So, we've decided to move them into separate rooms. Seems the sensible option. But, I wondered how other people have dealt with this... Did you move one twin, and them move them back to a shared room when they are a little older? Did you try to be more strict with discipline? Or, did your twins just happily share a room without a problem? Any insight welcome...

[chutneypig]

Sorry for the late reply, only just spotted this. Separation was the ony way to go for ours, slightly different for us as ours are B/G so we never intended to move them back in together. We moved one out into a different room and didn't look back - also had stairgates on for some time after.

They got a better nights sleep and we didn't go insane up and down the stairs trying to calm them down.

[nothingbyhalves]

We are having similar issues with our twin boys who are 3 and a half. We go in and take toys etc out if they won't settle. Doesn't always work , they painted a wall with sudocream they managed to get by moving beds around and climbing up shelves . Have mentioned putting one in the ( very small) spare room but dh isn't keen. Will watch this thread !!

[OctaviusAce]

Hehe nothing. They painted their bedroom windows with Sudocrem three weeks ago, and were overjoyed shouting, "We've been fingerpainting!". I guess we were lucky it was the windows! Don't like the sound of a wall full of that stuff.

I'm not keen to separate them to be honest. I hope (perhaps naively) that they will settle down as the nights get darker, and as they get a bit older. Moving one into another room means we lose our spare room, and the room they are currently in is a big one. If I put them in separate rooms, one will be in a room half the size, which seems a shame.

So far, the idea is to fit a stairgate over the smaller room, and move one of their beds into it. We won't redecorate the room, because we'll be hoping to move them back together in the future. We'll still do stories & getting ready for bed in their current room. I just hope it will be possible to move them back in together later...

[schmee]

Oh the joys of three year old twin boys and bedtime! At this stage I kept them in the same room, took all the toys out and got pretty tough (withdrawal of privileges etc). I worried that if I separated rooms I'd just be running between the two rooms all night...