Baby and Toddler Sharing a Room: How to Keep the Baby as Safe as Possible

My daughters are 2yrs 3months apart (now almost 6yrs old and 3.5yrs old). I'm not sure if you have to worry too much (unless your 2yr old can pick up a Tonka truck and throw it up and in). We had a few sessions of my older daughter wanting to "share" a stuffed animal and such but it was never a real issue. What did end up being a issue with room sharing was that neither would sleep through the others noise. Neither of my girls appeared to be light sleepers until we moved my youngest into the same room, then every slight wimper, cough, ect... woke the other. We finally, after almost a year, had to move them to separate rooms (in our case we converted our computer room). Then they were like that for a year and shortly after my youngers daughters 2nd birthday we decided to try it again. They are now happily sharing the room in a bunkbed.

You really won't know until you try.

E.

heh, thats an interesting question. I'll be in that position soon, so i look forward to what other people say.

But, honestly, it sounds to me like you don't have to worry about your older son invading your infant son's crib - sounds like your toddler is wonderfully excited and can easily be taught to respect the baby's space. Playing up his success and helpfulness as older brother seems like it would encourage him to continue good behavior.

I'm interested in how to divide up play stuff - of course my toddler has some toys i wouldn't give to an infant, but i am not sure how to arrange storage so that my toddler can get at her toys, but still have them easily put away and out of the infants reach.

we put our youngest in to share a room when she was about 6 months old (her sister was about 17 months). the first few nights she would toss stuffed animals into the baby crib, but we started allowing one care bear in her bed and that pretty much took care of that. she would occasionally climb into the crib and theyd sleep together, and i didnt see a problem with that. i think its natural for children to want to sleep close to those they love. i didnt scold her for it, but we would move her back into her bed when we went to check on them before we went to bed.

I would try the crib tent, maybe ebay?

I wouldn't bother with a crib tent personally. Your toddler can probably move most of them anyway. You could do a pack-n-play net for around $10 that would at least keep any lightweight toys from landing on the baby probably. Personally, I'd try to take toys out of the equation and move them all somewhere else in the house and explain to the 2 year old that you aren't taking them away, but that they aren't okay for the baby so the older needs to play with them in a different area.

my kids (now 3.5 and 5 months) share a room (and have shared since the baby was about 1 month)...have not had any problems - my son has never tried to climb into the crib (before we had the baby, the crib was in his room even though he was in a big bed)...I don't know if you really need to worry about it. We did tell our son that he can not put anything in the crib ever, and explained why - he has never even gone near it.

Our kids are 2 yrs apart and now share a room. We moved them together about 6 wks. It does create some issues like it is hard to let the baby cry for long since we don't want him to wake his sister.
For the most part it has been a smooth transition. When he naps in there, which isn't often, she doesn't play alone in there. Now I am not so fearful of toys but of her purposefully waking him up. She doesn't bother him at night because we put her to bed then I nurse him to sleep and then carry him into the room.
Crib tents I think would be bothersome. Would you really have the patience to remove it when your baby is crying at night?
We mainly leave stuffed animals in the bedroom so if a few end up in the crib it isn't as big of a deal and can't hurt the baby if they get tossed on his head.