Bedtime Routine for Siblings

https://youtu.be/cTWZnV6Pm5A Bedtime routine for siblings is our topic of focus for this week. When you’ve got more than one child and you are trying to juggle that bedtime routine and sometimes it just feels you are trying to do something for one and then you need to go to the other and then this one needs you and that one needs you. So of course it can all just feel too much. Well, don’t panic, we’re going to get that all streamlined for you and make it so that it works! Now, this is going to be particularly helpful for those of you who are usually doing the bedtime routine with more than one child by yourself. It is a little bit easier when you have another pair of hands on deck. So if you have your partner, your spouse, or another family member or somebody that can help you out, then, of course, it can help. Because one could be reading a bedtime story with one child while the other is making sure that the other one’s having a bath or brushing their teeth or whatever it might be. So of course it is easier when there are more than one parent or caregiver to lead the bedtime routine. But if you are on your own, and I’m sure all of you will be or have been at some stage or another, it is a juggle. There are things you can do to make that easier, and this is my advice as a mum whose children are 21 months apart, so I’ve juggled this from babies/toddler time right through to nine, 11 year old children. I know what this is like, both doing it by myself and doing it with my husband to help. So I completely know where you’re coming from. One of my top tips for you is getting them ready for bed at the same time. Now, they do need to be age appropriate, there’s no point in asking your 15 year old to get ready for bed at the same time as your two year old. That’s quite an extreme example, but be sensible with that. More often than not, even if you’re talking about a two year old and a seven year old, even if their bedtime might be slightly separate, there’s still no reason why they can’t get ready for bed at the same time. And here’s why. If you do the bedtime routine at the same time, so they go to the bathroom, there’s bathroom activity, maybe a bath or a shower, whatever it might be or a wash, there’s probably teeth brushing involved, and getting changed, getting ready for bed in the bathroom. If that stuff is done at the same time, even then if one is going to go to bed and the other is going to go and read a book quietly or do a puzzle, that’s absolutely fine. But what it means is the bedtime routine has begun for both of them. When your juggle is more with two very little ones, that’s when it is the hardest and the biggest struggle. So if you are talking about a very young baby and older baby or young toddler and it is a big juggle, what can you do when you physically need to be holding the baby? How do you do that on your own? Let’s start with bath time, if you can have a toddler safely in a bath, you are right there by their side, and you’ve got a baby bath next to the big bath and you can be bathing baby there with one hand, you are also there in case toddler needs you at the same time, that’s one way you can do it. You can also get safe baby bathing equipment that you can put into the bath next to the toddler and then you can bathe both of them at the same time. Or you can let them go in one at a time, you can use a baby bouncer seat or a baby safe play mat zone where you can have baby safely in an area on the floor near you and be hands on with one. And then you can swap them over that way if you need to. But having them in close proximity is going to definitely help you because then you have your eyes and your hands there to keep both of them safe. Of course safety is the main thing when you’re juggling little ones and water and bath times especially. This is if you are bathing them both, you might not be – that’s also easy then to have them in teh same space and one in while the other is happily distract