My children are 13 months apart (daughter 18 months, son 5 months). My daughter is clockwork with her schedule- nap from 1 to 4pm, sleep from 7:30 pm to 8am- but it took some serious "training" to get her that way (mostly by routine and the Ferber method). We moved our son into her room a couple months ago, and they sleep fine together. However, I am hesitant about letting him cry it out to get him to sleep because I don't want it to wake our daughter. In fact, I usually don't him put him to bed (nap and bedtime) without getting him close to 100% asleep. Any tips on how I should go about training him to get to sleep on his own? Also, they are at the babysitter's house 5 days a week-- how should I address the situation with their babysitter?
I put my oldest son with his brother when they were very young. My oldest was 2.5 and his brother was 6 months. The first week they were together the baby used to cry and it woke out the older boy but after a week the older got used to the noise and crying and he stopped waking up. It is like that until today (3 years after).
Have him fall asleep in another room then move him to their room. It isn't fair to disrupt her sleep anyway. She might stop napping too. I am not a big fan of letting babies cry it out but you have to do what works for you. You could let him fall asleep in a swing or put a pack n play in your living room. Best of luck. :-)
I've let the our youngest cry it out in his bedroom with his older brother, and that worked okay... but what really worked for us was to let him cry it out in our bedroom in his pack and play. When he was asleep, we would wheel it in to the bedroom with his brother. Once he was able to fall asleep quickly and quietly, we would just put him down in the room with his brother, and it worked out well.
Something else we did was put our youngest to bed first, as he slept longer, and then put our oldest to bed. That worked well, too.
I did just the same until my baby was 6 months. Then I moved the older one into our room for a few days while we sleep-trained the baby. The older one is 3 so he was just in my bed, but maybe you can set up a pack and play for now. Now I do the bedtime routine with baby and put him to bed in his crib, then do the routine with the older one in my bed, then he tiptoes into his bed. It was rough at firset, especially b/c the older one had a tendancy to sing himself to sleep and sometimes woke the baby. Mine go to daycare also so luckily I don't have this problem at naptime. But you know, it's probably not silent at daycare so our kids are used to ambient noise. BTW- we recently discovered that big brother sleeps soundly through his brother's night wakings. Have no idea how, but it's lucky. Good luck.
