The Agony and Ecstasy of Room Sharing for Siblings

Room sharing for siblings presents special challenges for parents and families when it comes to getting a good night of sleep. I wrote an article in the New York Times on the promise and pitfalls of room sharing. To help me with this, I asked subscribers to my mailing list to tell me about their experiences.

I’m fortunate to have some of the smartest readers on the internet. I asked my readers about how room sharing affects their family’s routines at night— the good, the bad, and the ugly. This information informed the article I wrote.

Benefits and joys of room sharing

Several moms mother notes that room sharing helped quite a bit with her younger child’s sleep issues. Natasha says:

My daughter age 2.5 and son age 5 share a room. This began about 8 months ago after a sleep trainer recommended it might help with my daughter's sleep challenges. She would scream at bedtime and wake up in the middle of the night for up to 3 hours. The room sharing worked like a charm!

Dr. Kara Garcia, a pediatrician in Pennsylvania, takes about how helpful this has been with her children, now ages 5 and 7.5 years old:

My eldest has always been a "nervous" sleeper, had a tough time getting to bed alone, but ever since we put them together he has been great at bedtime. My youngest is very flexible and after she got over the fact that she didn't "have her own special room," she likes being able to sleep in a bunkbed with her older brother.

I talk to patients about this a lot - each kid has a different sleep style and you have more success if they have "complementary sleep styles," so to speak.

WHAT'S GOOD: kids with separation anxiety thrive with someone else in the room, they are good buddies

My big worry now is when and how to separate them! They like having their own space, but want to sleep in the same room. I fear the regression my son will have when they are separated. But maybe they will sleep in the same room until he moves out :)

Children also tend to wake each other up less than you expect, although the mornings remain a challenge, as Dr. Garcia notes:

Middle of the night wakings rarely result in both being awake. Neither is a light sleeper, so maybe that's why, but I feel like even with other families, this is an overblown concern.

Sometimes the first one awake will wake the other one in the am, and that can be a bummer. They usually will stop doing it if we ask them to stay quiet in the am and just come over to our room.

My big worry now is when and how to separate them! They like having their own space, but want to sleep in the same room. I fear the regression my son will have when they are separated. But maybe they will sleep in the same room until he moves out!

One father writes:

At night, it's not a real issue. Even when one wakes up crying from a nightmare, the other one stays asleep. While we were night-potty training them and would bring take them to pee in the middle of the night, they didn't wake each other up (or wake up themselves). Nap time, when sleep is lighter, is more of a challenge. It is much harder for one to get up without waking up the other.

Rachel notes that sharing a room is economically and environmentally sound:

The best thing about kids sharing a room is saving space. We had to give up our home office space to move the babies into a separate bedroom from their sister, which matters because we both work from home often. We don't have enough bedrooms to give each child their own room. It also feels more environmentally friendly to share a smaller home as a family, rather than heating and cooling a 4-bedroom house.

It can even help on weekend mornings:

Our twins sometimes are content to babble at each other when they wake up in the morning, rather than immediately crying for us. This helps us doze in the mornings sometimes.

Another father writes:

One thing that I've found helpful is having an OK-to-wake clock (a stoplight that is red during sleep hours and turns green at wake-up time). We have used this to establish the norm that if the light is red, they can't make noise. There are books and stuffed animals in the room but no toys that make too much noise to keep them engaged and from waking each other up.

Room Sharing Challenges and How to Negotiate Them

Compatible schedules

It can be really challenging if children have an incompatible bedtime. Rachel writes more about this:

Our twins used to share with their 3-year-old sister, but it was a mess. We'd put the twins down at 7:30 in pack-n-plays in our home office so we could do bedtime with the 3-year-old in the kids' bedroom, then we'd have to move the babies to their cribs after their big sister was asleep. She would then wake up in the middle of the night and come into our bed almost every night. The day we gave the babies their own bedroom, she started sleeping through the night in her own bed.

Natasha says:

We have a challenge that both kids need to go to bed at different times. My daughter still naps - at daycare they let kids nap for over 2 hours until past 3 pm which means my daughter won't fall asleep until 9 pm. But my son needs to sleep at 8 pm. This is difficult. And i haven't yet found a workable solution. If i put my daughter to bed too early she just screams so my son can't fall asleep.

EV writes about the challenge when two children have different sensory preferences for falling asleep. Some children like music or sound; others require absolute silence.

One of my children falls asleep very easily (7) The other one (9) tosses and turns, wants to listen to a story on the radio etc. This makes it harder for the younger one to fall asleep and she complains.

Another mother writes:

My son, 7, shares a room with my daughter, 4. They both go to bed at 7:30pm though my son looks forward to going to bed (he's always been very good about going to bed) and my daughter would rather stay up. My daughter will be disruptive by either coming out several times or doing silly things/trying to get a rise out of her brother. This creates a problem for my son who desperately wants to go to sleep and for us who want to start our evening sans kids. While the 4 yr old's behavior has actually been better this past week, when she is disruptive we move my son into our room to go to sleep and later move him back into bed once they are both asleep. This lets him go to sleep and hope incentivizes her to stay in bed.

Sometimes, one child may be freaking out:

The challenge is if one is having a melt-down and the other one is ready to go to sleep. We have at times put one to bed and then let the other get through their melt-down outside the room before taking them in to bed, but it's hard for this not to be disruptive to the one who is already in bed.

Bedtime compromises

Sometimes you need to make some compromises with bedtime. Sara, a mother of three writes about the challenges of having ten month old twins and a 3 yo boy in a two bedroom apartment.

The one challenge now is that if one of us is alone with all three kids we definitely have to use screens to keep the older boy occupied and quiet during the twins' bedtime routine.

Bedtime stories can be a sticking point:

I thought we'd be able to read them the same bedtime stories, but they are not really interested in the same stories anymore, so that's not as streamlined as I'd like!

Pamela, who blogs at The Living Feed, is the mother of a 3.5 yo girl and 2 yo boy. She notes:

The bunk bed separation is a challenge for our story time routine. The first week or so we would lay down on the top bunk and read + fall asleep there. It was disruptive to then move my sleeping son to his bed. I tried standing next to the bed while both of them were on the top bunk but that was awkward. Last couple of days we’ve been doing story time on the bottom bunk - it helped the younger one get the comfort of being in his own bed + spend a few extra minutes laying next to his sister (which he actually loves to do, but which I cannot allow them to do because his sister’s movements throughout the night wakes him). This setup is lesser of an issue for the older one, who happily moves back up to her top bunk as soon as she gets the satisfaction of reading enough books.

Managing the transition:

If you introduce a baby into your older child’s room, doing so mindfully can be really helpful. Sara describes the way she handled this:

I've been surprised so far at how well it's gone. We're lucky that our older son, E, is very into being a big brother and not particularly jealous of the twins. We bought him a new twin bed (the IKEA kind that can turn into a low platform bed when he's a little older) and made a big deal about him picking out new bedding for his special bed.

Sarah Christian, a mother and sleep consultant in Pennsylvania, talks about the difficulty with one of her children when the family took in a foster child. The youngest boy, who is 4, had to move in with his older siblings. She talks about how they negotiated this transition :

After a time, he became more comfortable with the new routines of life with four kids, and he started staying in his bed all night again. We would offer some encouragement/praise in the mornings when he did, and remind him of how good it felt to sleep all night in his bed and wake up feeling well-rested.

Tell us about your experiences with room sharing

Thanks to everyone who wrote in— there were so many great responses that I could not include them all. If your children share a room, let me what works and what doesn’t.

Originally published March 2019. Last reviewed/updated by Dr. Craig Canapari, MD in March 2019