The Mom Crowd

Jennifer is a stay-at-home mom to two great boys: Bailey (age 6) and Riley (age 5), and wife to her wonderful husband of 10 years.  She enjoys scrapbooking, reading, going to her discipleship group, and endlessly discussing Star Wars with her children.

When my family moved to a new city 3 years ago, we lived in a 2-bedroom apartment for six months.  We had no choice but to have our 3 1/2 year old and 20-month old sons share a room.  It worked out fine at first, but after a few weeks, they realized, “Hey, we are in a room together with our bed and crib very close to each other.  Let’s party all night!”  This culminated with our son climbing out of his crib for the first time at 23 months and making a regular habit out of it.  My husband and I ended up taking turns sitting in their room at night, trying to make sure they did not interact with one another.  This often took awhile and cut into our own time together at night.  We were very excited to finally move into our house and give each boy his own room.

After we had been in the house for about 18 months, my oldest son was sick with strep throat one night.  My youngest son, then 3, wanted to sleep in the room with my sick, older child.  We pulled out the trundle under my 5-year old’s bed.  They ended up sleeping that way for a week before we finally asked the two of them if they wanted to share a room.  We got an enthusiastic “yes!” from both of them.  It has been 16 months now, and our arrangement is still working great. 

Some of the things we love about our children sharing a room are:

• They are so darn cute together!  We have caught them many mornings scrunched together in one bed playing their hand-held games or reading books.  Often times at night, we hear them talking softly to each other before they fall asleep.  My hope is that this will start them on the road to a lasting friendship and brotherhood.  I know many grown-up people who have a hostile relationship or no relationship at all with their siblings.  It saddens me to think of my children’s relationship turning out this way.
• It has helped them be more considerate to each other.  They are also more willing to compromise.  If one of them gets hurt, is crying, or needs something after we have put them to bed, the other one will come get us and make sure we attend to the distraught.  Most nights, they will fight over who gets to sit by the spout in the tub if we are bathing them together.  I was shocked the other night to see my youngest sit against the back of the tub and say, “You can sit by the water tonight and I can sit there tomorrow,” to which my older son nodded his head and hugged his brother.  And one day last week, my youngest was playing with a toy that his older brother got for Christmas.  My older son saw this, and instead of snatching it away with a subsequent physical fight, said, “That’s okay, Riley.  You can have it.”  He actually gave it to him to keep!
• We now have an extra bedroom to use as a playroom.  Their toys are in the back of the house and the clutter is contained for the most part.  They like having a space where they can set up their superheroes on the ground and they can leave them up to play with the next day.  We just shut the door and they come back to it in the morning.

My boys have definitely gotten along better in the past 16 months.  I don’t know if this is from sharing a room or the fact that they are just getting older, or both.  Someday they may decide that they need or want their own space again, and that will be fine.  But for now, I see bunk beds in our future – and the argument over who will get to sleep on the top bunk!

Do your children share a room?  Does this improve their relationship or make it more challenging?