consequence for waking baby

[Still_Learning]

DS 5.5yp can't control himself when it comes to waking up his 6 mo sister.

Several times a week he'll do it, always on purpose.

It's driving me batty.

I've tried explaining that when baby doesn't nap baby is grumpy. When baby is grumpy, Mommy is grumpy.

I've explained that when baby is asleep he has me all to himself.

Nothing works.

Ideas??

[just_lily]

How is he waking her up? Just being loud, or going into her room?

I think prevention is key here. Are you really focusing on him during the baby's nap? Maybe you need to focus on making it more fun and attractive. Maybe you can find a few special toys, like lego or playdoh that can only be brought out during naps. Or if you do TV, maybe you can watch a special show or video together. But if when the baby wakes up the toys go away or the tv goes off.

And could you put some kind of white noise in the baby's room to increase the liklihood that she sleeps through the noise? When my DD was still taking two naps a day I had to put a fan in her room so that my daycare kids wouldn't wake her up.

[midnightmommy]

Haha! I could have written this! Except my son is 6. DD only likes to sleep in my arms after nursing, so we are downstairs in the Living room. I usually tell my son that he needs to play quietly down here or he can go up and be as loud as he wants upstairs. He usually choosing to stay with us, but can't stay quiet for more than a minute or so. Then I tell him to go up and get his noise out. The first couple of times were tough, but now he understands he's not being punished just given a better place to play he's fine with it. I make sure to encourage him to take whatever toys he was playing with up with him, and then if he hasn't come back down before she wakes up I make sure I go tell him she's up. I also thank him for being playing upstairs while his sister rests.

Basically I've given up on him ever being even remotely quiet enough for her to sleep.

[junipermuse]

We have the same problem at our house. Dd is loud, but insists on playing upstairs instead of downstairs or in the back yard, and if the baby wakes too soon she always wants to come in with me to "help" put him back to sleep, but then she starts dancing and singing really loud and wakes him up more. Or today she started throwing a very loud temper tantrum because she wanted to use the bathroom in the room he was sleeping in instead of one of the other two bathrooms or the 2 potty seats in other parts of the house. I had to take her outside where we stayed together until she quieted down. The thing is she always wants my undivided attention once he's awake, but if I try to spend time with her when he's sleeping she'll often just turn me down. I wish I had an answer, but I don't. But you're definitely not alone.

[sgmom]

If he's not just bored, then it sounds like he either really loves his new baby sister and wants to spend as much time with her as possible, or he's looking for attention from you. So the solution to either would be to include him more with the baby when she's awake, and spend more time with him when she is not.

Have you asked him why he's doing this?

[HoneyTree]

I posted something similar a few months back; maybe some of the suggestions there could help.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...292&highlight=

But what has worked for US these past months is me making the connection clear that baby sleeping = FUN time for me and older child. Baby waking = my attention has to go back to the baby, at least temporarily as we do diaper change, nursing, etc. Sounds exactly like what you're doing, but I will tell you it took a couple of months of adjustments before it really stuck.

Older child and I do things together during baby's nap time such as play with the games that have small pieces, sit and play a computer game together, make big Licoln Logs creations, etc. Mostly now I just have to remind him of what we can do while baby sleeps and can't do when he wakes up.