My girls share a room, and they have bunk beds. My 3.5 year old has woken up at some point and come to our bed basically every single night since she was 18 months old and moved into a bed. We have never tried to change the behavior because we all get more sleep that way (she used to just walk to our room and ninja her way into bed and we would keep sleeping). Since she starts out the night in her own bed, and naps in her bed, we've never experienced the downsides of co-sleeping, like where parents feel like they have to go to bed at the same time as their kids or whatever.

However, recently she was starting to wake up earlier and earlier and ask to go to our bed, even if we were still awake. So I decided it was time to work on getting her to stay in her own bed. So the last 2 weeks, we've talked up staying in her own bed a lot and offered a reward. We also talked about the "Sleep fairy" and how the sleep fairy will come and give a small token if kids stay in their bed all night. Well, this has resulted in DD2 waking in the night and screaming for us, instead of coming to us. Sometimes 3-4 times a night. Since she shared a room with DD1, sometimes she wakes her up when she screams for us. So now we're all getting less sleep and it's worse than before. But we have persevered.

We have talked a lot about only calling for mommy/daddy in an emergency (have to throw up, have to pee), and not for little things like wants us to hand us her water (it's right next to her bed) or wants us to put her covers back on (she can pull them up herself).

So this brings us to our latest phase--DD2 seems to have understood not calling for mommy and daddy unless it's an emergency--but this has morphed into her calling for DD1 and asking HER to come to her bed because she's scared.

At first I thought this was cute (I found DD1 sleeping on the bottom bunk with DD2 this morning), but after hearing what transpire in the night, I think it's less cute. Apparently DD2 woke DD1 up in the night and said she's scared and asked her to come sleep with her. So DD1 crawled down and got in bed with her, but then DD2 kept talking and moving around, until DD1 threatened to tell on her or go back up to her bunk if DD2 didn't go to sleep and stop talking.

DD1 is only 5.5 years old! She's a mature personality, but I don't expect her to lose sleep to parent DD2 in the night. The crazy thing is, we live in a very small place and I've been sleeping with both doors open, so I can hear DD2 if she wakes up--and I didn't hear any of this. Normally, I can hear them if they so much as cough. So I feel bad for DD1, but I gotta tell you....me and DH had a full night's sleep IN THE SAME BED WITH NO OTHER LITTLES, so that's pretty huge, haha.

Anyway, should I press on and hope this is a stage and that eventually DD2 will stay in her bed by herself? Should I go back to telling her she should come get us if she needs something, and not to disturb DD1? Or tell her to call for us (which sometimes wakes up DD1 as well?) Just let them work it out, as long as we aren't disturbed? haha