I need some ideas on how to partition a room in my apartment. I have two daughters ages 2 and 3 who have completely opposite personalities and cannot stand sharing a room together. My 2 year talks herself to sleep and my 3 year old can't sleep with noise. So just hanging a sheet won't work. It's gotten to the point where my 3 year old is begging me to let her move in with my husband and me. Any help would be great. Their room is approx 12.5 ft x 13 ft. Thanks!
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Are they climbers? If you placed some bookcases back to back to form a wall down the middle, would they try to climb on them? You could screw plates together on the top to keep them from tipping apart - these would be high and the stuff on them would help absorb the noise. Then you could maybe do a folding padded "screen" between the top of the bookcase and the ceiling -the padding will help absorb more sound, and they could put stuffed animals and such up there.
Most bookcases are about 3 feet wide -so 4 would give you a wall about 6 feet wide and probably about 1.5 feet thick. As long as you don't block the exit - you should be ok. I would put the beds on the far side as far aaway from the wall as possible.
Will music help muffle the sound? For my son I use a fan - it helps muffle noises and lets him sleep better. he is 2 1/2.
good luck
You might get an air cleaner or a white noise machine or just a tape/CD with ocean sounds on it to blot out the noisier sibling.
I was wondering if you could put them to bed at different times. Let the talker, talk herself to sleep then put the older one down to bed.
Susan from ThriftyFun
Thanks for the suggestions.
We try our hardest to put them to sleep at different times but a lot of nights we stay out swimming until 8 or 9 pm when their father gets home from work and they both are tired and want to go to sleep at the same time.
I am in a similar situation, living in a two bedroom house with girls ages 4 & 6. We use sleeping music and sometimes let them go to bed at different times. Sometimes when the girls are keeping each other up at night, I put one to sleep in my bed and one to sleep in their own bed. Then when I am ready for bed I just move whoever is in my bed to their bed. It is not a perfect fix, but it works some nights.
I wouldn't try to change the room at all. Your 3 year old can get used to the 2 year old making her noise. They are sisters and this is just part of being sisters and learning to live in the world with other people. I would never start the bad habit of letting a child sleep in the bed with me.
I would put those girls to bed and say, stay there. Tell the 3 year old to stop complaining, close her eyes and go to sleep.
Be the grown-up here.
I had the same problem when my children were younger. The apartment I rented wouldn't allow me to build a partition that would be permanent. So I built a portable half wall. I used 5- 8' pieces of 2" x 4"s(cut into 4' lengths), 1-4'x8' sheet of 1/2" plywood, and 1-4x8' piece of 3/16" plywood. Sandwiched the 3/16" of plywood (4' high 8' long) between 8 of the 2x4's and used the 1/2"piece as the base. I screwd the 2x4's into the base piece; the base piece set under both beds for stability. I covered the base with used carpet remnants.
Give them each a cheap little radio and tape the volume button very quiet, and that will hush the chatter of the one and calm the other.
How about reading to the girls at bed time? Maybe if you or dad were reading a story or two, the little one would fall asleep. I doubt very much that the 2 year old talks loud enough to keep the 3 year old awake. Maybe this is a bit of attention getting behavior on her part, and you could solve it with something special just for her, like the radio suggested earlier, or a tape player with stories or whatever.
I used to read to my kids every night, and when I was too tired to read I would recite little poems. If you don't know any poems or nursery rhymes, you could sing. Sometimes I would be the first one to fall asleep!!!!
Try to come up with a reasonable solution that will keep you and both little girls happy. Telling little ones to "suck it up" is only going to lead to tears and fuss at bedtime. If these were two adults with this problem, they would try to work out a compromise.
There are a bunch of ideas for dividing your children's shared bedroom room here:
www.decorating-kids-rooms.net/
and here:
www.decorating-kids-rooms.net/
Some of the ideas shared via the above links include tips to help make an individual space for each child.
I have 3 boys sharing a room, one on an upper single bunk and two on the bottom double bunk. The key for us is to stagger the bedtimes, putting the younger one to bed earliest while keeping the ones still up relatively quiet.
Our youngest doesn't like to fall asleep with music but the older ones prefer to. At first is was a challenge to get the older children into bed quietly.
But now they understand they'll be ones going to bed early without their music if they don't get ready for bed and play quietly when their youngest brother goes to bed.
I'm curious to learn what you did to resolve your issues.
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