As the title suggests, DH and I are stuggling to get our room-sharing boys (DS1 aged 5 and DS2 who is 3-and-a-half) to sleep at night. They are in a bunk bed, with DS1 up the top. It's mainly the 3yo who is the problem, but DS1 this week has started to follow suit.

They have an established bed-time routine. Dinner, shower or bath, reading and bed (albeit sometimes the shower/bath comes before dinner). And 7pm is their bed time, give or take five minutes. They have a dull night light on, but otherwise the room is dark and their door is closed and their room is relatively quiet. All conducive to going to sleep, you might think! Apparently not.

For the past couple of months, DS2 wil continuously yell for his brother to talk to him, or for DH or I to go back into the room. He'll ask for a dozen kisses and cuddles. He wants different, or more, toys in his bed (instead of a teddy, DS2 is very attached to a Thomas Tank train which goes with him most places). You name it, anything and everything he can think of to get out of bed (I need to do a wee ... but then can't as he'd only recently been to the toilet), or get us back in to the bedroom he will do or ask for. We're not daft, we don't give in to his every whim and wish. We also realise it's attention he's after (DS2 demands a LOT of attention). DS2 is going to OT fortnightly so we can get help with his "high engine speed", meaning he finds it hard to calm down and slow down at times. So we understand this means he takes a bit longer to wind down at night. But some nights he's up and down for up to two hours, and as mentioned ... the yelling for us or for his brother to talk to him is crazy. And the past few nights DS1 has found a reason to delay us leaving/call us back.

Between the older boys and DS3 (10m) who can't self settle to sleep (another story altogether), 7pm is becoming a horrible time in this house.

So for anyone who has room-sharing boisterous, attention-seeking siblings ... how on earth do you get them to settle to sleep? We're lost about "what next" as we thought with our fairly set routine would have helped.

Cheers, Andie