We’re getting ready to move and are considering looking for a house with the idea that our two boys will share a room growing up. Right now, our 3 yo has his own room and the baby (5 months) sleeps in ours. I always had my own room as a kid (my brother is 8 years older than me and I don’t think either of us would have been happy sharing a room). For those of you who shared a room or those of you whose kids share a room, tell me about it. Was it fun or did it totally suck?
My twins shared a room until they were 10. Up until they were school-age or so, it was fine. After they got older, had their own friends, own habits, etc. it got increasingly tense.
I noticed the same thing with my sisters, who were a year apart and shared a room. It got particularly bad when they were in high school, and couldn’t take refuge from each other.
Is your baby sleeping through the night? Remember, the first rule of sharing a room is, when one wakes up, the other wakes up.
Both. My brothers and I had our conspiracies, our talking, our fights, and our brawls. One of my brothers tore a page out of a Hardy Boys book, and then brought me ice cream in his shirt pocket after I got sent to bed early for flipping out about it.
I’m the oldest of nine; six sisters and two brothers. Sharing rooms was just the way it was, none of us ever thought twice about it. I’d say let them share, and don’t worry about it. All I’d suggest is that when the older hits the teenage years, you work at allowing him some alone time. Let him stay home while you take the younger shopping with you, that sort of thing. (That’s a ways down the road, I know.)
I always shared with my little brother who is 7 years younger than me. The age difference helped I think, as we weren’t angsty teens at the same time or anything. By the time he hit junior high, I was off at college. It didn’t suck, we had to learn to get along and made us really close to this day. We had our own stuff and our own space. I was glad for those coping and problem solving skills when I got to the dorms, thats for sure. I remember we weren’t allowed to lock our doors (to keep me from locking him out or vice versa). I think we got along a lot better together having to learn to be together even if we were mad at each other.
Sharing a room with a sibling is no big deal. I rather think we make too much of kids having their own room in this country.
I shared a room with my brother till I moved out, actually for a couple years I shared a room with him and two of my cousins who were living with us. (It was a big room, so even with 4 it didn’t feel crowded.) Yes, it can take some negotiating as far as space and staking out part of the room as ‘yours’ but all in all it’s no big.
Yeah, the baby is *pretty much * sleeping through the night. The 3 yo, too! (He’s sometimes worse than the baby…he likes to “hold hands” at 3 am.)They’re both dead to the world when they’re sleeping though. We’ve never tried to maintain quiet sleep environments for them.
I shared a bedroom with my older brother until I was about 13. Then we moved to a bigger house and we got separate rooms. At the time I didn’t give it any thought. That’s just how things were. It was fun sometimes and problematic at other times but I don’t recall its being a problem in any major way. It certainly taught us to share, get along and put up with each other’s foibles. Your sons will survive the experience.
My kids shared a room from the time the younger was a newborn until he was almost a year old (she’s 3 years older). I did not have any problems with them waking each other up, even though they had different naptimes.
I come from a family of 5 and, as Frank said, sharing a room was the norm. The most we ever had in one room was 3, however. We had a lot of fun.
When one of my sisters and I were in junior high, we even shared a room which was also a passageway from one side of the house to the other. Privacy? What’s that 
?
Like many things, if you act like it’s no big deal it probably won’t be. Another handy thing is that the kids will play with each other and won’t be under your feet so much.
I have two brothers and a sister, and it was always three boys in one room and my sister in a room to herself. Sharing a room with my brothers was a very good thing, although as we got into our teens I started spending more and more time on my hobbies in the basement and eventually created a room for myself down there with the spiders. It wasn’t about getting away from my brothers as it was about having sex with my girlfriend.
When I had kids of my own I was really hoping to get by with a two bedroom house. When my second child came out a different gender than the first I knew I was going to have to move or add on eventually. But they shared a room for many years and were unhappy about being split up when we got a big enough house.
The paradigm of growing up having one’s own room is not particularly beneficial, to my way of thinking.
That was our most as well. Me and my brothers; three sisters in one, and two in another. My last sister came along so late, she only had to share for a year or two, if that. My sisters did tend to get mixed-and-matched, depending on which one wanted to kill another at the time.
I shared a room with my sister up until the time I left home, then I shared a room with my husband.
My daughters voluntarily shared a room until my oldest daughter decided she wanted her own room at the age of 12.
Sharing a room is a good thing, IMO.
I shared with my younger sister for our entire childhood (I think we were still sharing when I was 18) and we survived pretty much unscathed. We had our “Les Nessman” moments, but for the most part, we were ok with it.
I shared a room with my two brothers till I was 15 or so. One brother is 2 years older one is 5 years younger. It was never a major issue. My older brother was the only one to start dating while we shared the room. It wasn’t ideal for him then.
My two sisters shared a room as well. There was alot more conflict in that case. thier was a ten year difference between them.
Later on in life, my older brother and I got an apartment together. He was by far the best roomate I’ve had.
My brother and I shared a large bedroom for sixteen years. I would never have wanted it any other way. We played together, studied together, and talked to each other at night about this and that and everything else under the moon and stars until we fell asleep. The brotherly bond we developed was because of sharing a room.
My sons shared a room from about nine months (little one was a slow developer and couldn’t roll over until then, so I wanted him with me in case of breathing troubles or whatever…) and five years old. They were in the same room for three years and then we moved to our house from an apartment and they got their own rooms.
Whilst they were delighted about this, we then had three years of the younger one dragging all his toys methodically to the older one’s room to play, and both of them begging every weekend night to be allowed to sleep together.
So… as of about four weeks ago we needed more space because our music equipment has expanded so stupidly, so shuffled all the rooms around so that my husband and I are in the smallest bedroom, the next smallest is the music room, and the largest is for both boys, who are now nearly 10 and just turned 6.
The older one was a bit disappointed but we have made it so that the room itself is completely empty so they have a big area to play, and the boys are bedded down in futons in what used to be closets under the eaves. They absolutely LOVE this and have done their best to block off their own spaces and make them into cozy dens. We have promised the older one that when he goes to JHS at 12 years old, we’ll think again.
As other posters have said, we have to make sure that the older one is allowed to reatreat there when the younger one is tormenting him, but so far its working out well.
That exactly how my sisters’ bedroom situation was, when I was young. I’m the youngest of 5 girls, so I always had my own room, and the older 4 had to fight it out among the two upstairs bedrooms. I seem to recall that they switched rooms every year or two. They all still hate each other, so take that for what it’s worth.
I now have three boys, and they will eventually share one room (but that room is the entire second story of our house, so they will get more square footage than us parents). For now, the 5-year-old and the 20-month-old are sharing that room, and the 3-month-old is still sleeping in our room. As soon as the tiny one is big enough to defend himself, upstairs he goes.