Room Sharing

Today Danielle is having a forum on room sharing among children at her site.

This topic is of some interest to me as when our second child will be born this September, after the first few months, he or she will need to share a room with our daughter who is only nine-months-old now. We live in an 1100 square foot home with three bedrooms. We have no idea how we are going to manage negotiating two cribs in any of our bedrooms, even our master. The small size of our bedrooms may necessitate us losing our "guest bedroom" which has only been in existence since our daughter's birth and we were able, with gifts from friends and family, to purchase a full size bed. We have no problem with allowing the kids to share but are open to the idea that they may require their own living space as they grow and if that is the best option and we can make it happen, we will. There are other ways, after all, to teach our children to share, get along, learn to live with difficult people, and be close without sharing a bedroom.

As to the issue of sharing, let it be known that children having their own rooms IS NOT a recent phenomenon. My mother-in-law, who is seventy-one years-old, has had her own bedroom all her life except for the years she was married to my father-in-law (less than 20). She was not an only child but a later in life baby in a family with only one other child (when I say later in life, her brother was fifteen years older than she was). In her case, sharing would have been a great benefit. When I was six months pregnant with my daughter, she visited us for what my husband had thought was going to be a day trip. She then decided to let us know after she had arrived that she had intended to stay the entire night and would appreciate it if we could give up our bed so she could sleep there (instead of the couch where our other guests slept at the time because we couldn't afford a guest bed). Not so bad you say, well, I could not fit on the couch and would have had to sleep at six months pregnant on our floor which is over a concrete slab. Now, before everyone starts with, but she's 71, my great grandmother who was in her late 80s and had had both hips replaced ALWAYS slept on the couch because it was comfortable and also because she refused to put someone else out of his or her bed. My mother-in-law also expects her guests to sleep on her floor, never offering her bed and has no guest room, using what would be her other bedroom as an extra television room. The point of this diatribe is that we shouldn't all jump to the conclusion that "kids today are so spoiled" because they have their own rooms, it's been happening for a while and is not necessarily as symptom of wealth either--my mother-in-law was born during the GREAT DEPRESSION and her family was as bad off as any and her father built her a room onto the house.

We all need to remember that living with other people and sharing are things that also should be being taught in many avenues not just because we are sharing a room. I had my own room growing up (I had three brothers who shared a room, my parents refused to mix sexes when it came to bedrooms) but still shared a bathroom with my brothers who destroyed many of my toiletries that I paid for myself when I was a teenager to "make potions" and just have fun (and I'm not just talking the little bit of make-up I was allowed but also feminine hygiene products and shampoo and face wash).

Just because a child has his or her own bedroom does not guarantee that he or she will not be close to his or siblings or will not learn to share or get along with people of other temperments or personalities. As parents, it is part of our vocation to know each of our children well enough (even in a large family) to understand how to best meet that child's needs, maybe it's not a bedroom but a more private area to hang out with friends as the original writer said, regardless we have to try our best to treat that child as the individual, wonderful, unique part of God's creation he or she is and not just a piece a of the larger whole that is the family. A healthy balance is what needs to be struck.

I'm all for siblings sharing bedrooms, if it is in the best interest of the family or in the case that allowing a child to have his or her own room is in no way feasible despite it being the best option for your family. The reason I am not posting a response of Danielle's site and putting it here is because of some of the other responses I have read there seem to reek of "this is the only way to raise your children and if your kids aren't sharing rooms YOU, reader are a bad parent, YOUR children are entitled brats, and YOU are not teaching them sharing or compromise." Even Danielle's originating post carries some of this sentiment. Many of the posters are like us and don't have another option, fine. A few express a balance approach. Those comments that are judgmental do get under my skin, though, if for no other reason than God did not intend us to judge one another, but to help one another. Share your ideas fine, but don't say that others are wrong, especially if you have never walked in their shoes.