How do I get my son to sleep in his own room without waking my daughter?
My son is almost 3 and my daughter is 15 months. My wife and I moved our son to a toddler bed just after he turned 2. After the usual transitional struggles, he seemed to adjust fine to the change within a month or so and both kids were sleeping well...
But now, for the past 4-5 months, he's been waking up EVERY night anywhere between 11pm–2am and coming into our room to sleep with us, which has now turned into a constant battle of back kicks, 90-degree turns, head kicks, lots of sleep-talking, physically re-positioning him every hour, and overall terrible sleep for my wife and I.
I've tried a handful of times to immediately take him back to his own room, but he has a WILD freakout and won't even consider laying down, which wakes up my daughter because all our rooms are right next to each other, so now the whole family doesn't sleep. I eventually cave and bring him back to our bed for the night.
For more context, we put both kids to sleep around 7:00pm. I read a book to my son and stay in his room until he falls asleep, usually only within 10-15 mins (I realize this might actually be Problem #1). My son doesn't nap anymore, but my daughter is still on a single 1–2 hr afternoon nap. Both kids wake up for the day between 6:00–7:00am, with my son almost always waking up first. My daughter is a great sleeper in general, albeit a light one.
What do we do?? I fear there's no way around him sleeping independently than to keep trying to bring him back to his room and tough it out for however long until he finally gets it. We do have the ability to lock his bedroom door from the outside, which we've also tried, but that also causes pure chaos. Has anyone else gone through this? Any advice is appreciated.
Sincerely,
Two very tired parents