trouble at night with my boyfriend & twin girls

Céline - posted on 10/10/2009

I think they are used to having daddy to themsleves and they do not want to share. It will take time and adjustment but daddy will have to do his part in telling the twins that it is better to stay in their bed ect.....and enforce it. If it does not come from dad..it will most likely not work. They are testing you and him to see how far they can push your bottons.

When i seperated from my husband....i let my 5 year old sleep with me for a couple of months. What a mistake.....after trying to put him back in his bed.....the horror would be begin. Night after night of waking up...taking him back to his bed...tell him to stay in bed....ect....finally i locked my door so he would not come in. I had baby monitors still in his room so i could hear everthing without worrying that he was coming in because he was sick or something like that....it took 6 months for him to realise that sleeping with mommy was not going to happen again. The odd occasion when he was really sick or sad about something i would let him but not on a full time basis. Even today..he is 12 and still asks from time to time if he can sleep with me. The only time we actually do is when we go camping....then we make it a special treat.

Holly - posted on 10/10/2009

My daughter used to do that too. It was just her and my hubby for 7 months before I came into their lives and they were quite a unit! She was 3 1/2 when we met and she's 7 now. She just kinda stopped on her own, but she does still like to come in and cuddle early in the morning sometimes. Her major problem was taht she was afraid of monsters when she was younger, so every night my hubby would go in her room and "scare" all the monsters away from wherever she told him they were. That helped a little, then when I moved in I gave her an old toy of mine. It's a hand puppet of a possum (yes, a possum... I was a weird kid!). His name is Pepper and there's a squeaker in his nose. I told her that when she got cared all she had to do was sqeak his nose and it would scare the monsters away - I also told her it worked for me when I was younger, which helped a lot! She doesn't sleep with Pepper anymore, but he is still in her room! :)



Good luck - I know it's hard!

Jodi - posted on 10/09/2009

Marlee, both my son and step-son were the same at that age, and my daughter is 4 and often does this now too (count yourself lucky - my step-son was a bedwetter, I would often wake not with elbows in my back, but pee all up my back!!). It really is a phase they go through, and 4 is a difficult age to get them out of the habit because it seems to be a common thing they all gor through. My daughter uses every excuse under the sun - I had a bad dream, I'm cold, I'm scared and so on.



Try offering incentives for them to stay in their own bed all night (call it bribery if you like). Not kowing the girls, I can't say what would work, but you could possibly set up reward charts, and each time they go a week without crawling into your bed, they get to go to McDonalds for lunch, or something like that. Incentives work with my daughter. She occasionally loses sight of the incentive and will get back into the bad habit a few times, and then we just need to reinforce the incentive again and remind her when we put her to bed. She's been pretty good lately :)

Amber-lee - posted on 10/08/2009

my little SD was exactly the same, she is a a very hot sleeper and having her in our bed got so difficult because she got so hot she'd male me start to sweat that i started sleeping in her bed (she has a single that is right next to our bed) we tried making her stay in her own bed and it worked but she would scream and cry for aout an hour before she fell asleep, then we tried this.. we gave her a warm chocolate, read her bed time story's then put a few drops of lavendar oil on her pillow and her nighty and told her it would give her sweet dreams (she now just calls the lavendar oil sweet dreams) also her father lays on his side and holds her hand until she falls asleep. if this doesn't help try letting them into your bed until they fall asleep and then move them back into their own beds, also a night light might help, my SD has a little dinsosaur shaped one that she calls Bronty, hope this helps!!