A Room of One's Own

I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

Beliavsky wrote:
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

You can always have the two younger kids share a room for the next seven
or eight years or so. Or buy a house with a cellar. When the brothers
are around 10 years old, you have a new project: building a cellar bedroom.

jeff

Beliavsky wrote:
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

I don't think kids *need* their own bedrooms - and especially not at the
ages of your children. My sister, eldest brother, and I all shared a
room until we were 8, 7, and 5, and we enjoyed it. We weren't alone,
so we weren't scared, and it made it easier to sneak out of bed and play
in the dark.

I got a room of my own when I was 14 - and the only way I swung that was
to move into the guest room and promise that any time we had guests, I'd
move back out with no complaint.

What works best may depend partly on what the rest of the house is like.
I like for a house to have places everybody can go for privacy, and
of course separate bedrooms is good for that. I've been in houses that
are basically a big living area, a kitchen, and bedrooms - so if you
don't have a bedroom to yourself, you have nowhere to yourself.

Clisby

Beliavsky wrote:

I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

I don't think kids *need* their own bedrooms - and especially not at the
ages of your children. My sister, eldest brother, and I all shared a
room until we were 8, 7, and 5, and we enjoyed it. We weren't alone,
so we weren't scared, and it made it easier to sneak out of bed and play
in the dark.

I got a room of my own when I was 14 - and the only way I swung that was
to move into the guest room and promise that any time we had guests, I'd
move back out with no complaint.

What works best may depend partly on what the rest of the house is like.
I like for a house to have places everybody can go for privacy, and
of course separate bedrooms is good for that. I've been in houses that
are basically a big living area, a kitchen, and bedrooms - so if you
don't have a bedroom to yourself, you have nowhere to yourself.

Clisby

In article ,
Beliavsky says...

I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

The boys will be fine with sharing a room, unless they get to be really
incompatible (only time would tell, and there probably won't be a problem).

As they grow to teens what might be better than their own rooms, would be a
finished basement or other area to retreat to, have their own TV, have a pool
table or whatever, for hobbies and entertaining and levels of noise that might
be too loud for the rest of the household.

Banty

On Feb 12, 12:14 pm, Beliavsky wrote:
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

I have two girls 1.5 years apart so my situation is a little bit
different from yours. We have a 4 br house. So we have a master br,
office and two bedrooms to spare. I want my kids to share a room. Just
because there are rooms doesn't mean everyone gets their own room. As
someone else mentioned, it really helped them sleep in their own room.
IIRC, you also want your 2yo out of your bed. Theoretically if he
shares a room with his older brother, he would be more relaxed, less
scared. Also, they have to clean up only one room, not two

The fourth bedroom in our house is furnished and labeled "guest room"
though we hardly ever have guests. This sounds like waste of space but
I don't like to over-indulge my kids.

"Beliavsky" wrote in message
...
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.'


As the youngst of 7 children, I can tell you that need is difined
differently in different families. Where having one's own bedroom is a
physical impossibility, strangely we wind up not needing it. In my case...
ever. Until I moved out to college.

Beliavsky wrote:
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

Lots of kids survive sharing rooms. We have a similar
situation. There came a point when the boys were around 8 and
10 when it became clear that they were not doing all that well
sharing a room. Their personalities are too different, and
not having their own space to retreat to was an issue. By the
time they were 10 and 12, our need to have an office was far
less important than their need to be in separate rooms. Now
that they have separate rooms, things are much better for all
of us.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Feb 12, 10:14�am, Beliavsky wrote:
I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

Depending on your home office needs, it might be possible that office
space could be carved out elsewhere. I work at home, and we have a
four-bedroom house with an office in the upstairs hall (the file
cabinets are kept elsewhere). It's also entirely possible that a five-
bedroom house may be the same price as a four-bedroom, particularly if
one of the bedrooms is pretty small. The enormous price jump seemed to
me to come between three and four bedrooms (anything over three
bedrooms being quite unusual in our market already). The market in
your area may be very different, however.

We did end up remodeling a three-bedroom house into a four-bedroom
one, but there were lots of other problems besides the lack of a
bedroom. Formerly the master bedroom was in a converted attic space
that got very stuffy in the summer and had only a narrow stair going
up: we couldn't get a queen-size bed up the stairs. It also had
windows down by the floor that would have been incredibly unsafe for
young children. *Usable* space isn't always measured by the number of
rooms. We lived in a rental house during our remodel that was smaller
than our own, but had tons of storage, and it worked out quite well.

My daughters don't get along terribly well at the best of times, and
it was a relief to have them in their own rooms. I do think *our*
family is overall much better off for it, along with the other
benefits of enough space. But everyone needs space in a different way.
Some don't at all mind sharing sleeping space, but could really use
some kind of space for special projects. There are lots of creative
ways to handle stuff.

--Helen

Beliavsky wrote:

I wonder at what age kids "need" to have their own bedrooms. With 4yo
and 2yo boys and a 1yo girl, if we buy a 4 bedroom house and use one
room as an office, and if we give the girl her own room, the eldest
boy will never have his own room. I think the boys will just have to
live with that, as billions of other kids have. We could look for a 5
bedroom house, but the children may be better off if we spend less on
a house and put the money in their college funds etc.

There is no "right" answer here, but I wonder what opinions people
have about this.

My father (born in Colorado in 1904 as the second of 5 kids) shared
space with his two parents and his grandparents also lived with them.
They had a one bedroom house. The grandparents slept in the
parlor/living room, and the boys and their dad slept over the store.

My sister and I were 2.5 years apart, and we shared a room until I was
in 8th grade. We had a 3 bedroom house, and the front bedroom was the
'playroom', the middle bedroom was my parent's room, and the back
bedroom was ours. At that point we moved and my mom had one of the
upstairs rooms partitioned into two and added a bathroom up there, so
each of us got our own room, and my mom and dad slept downstairs and
turned the other bedroom down there into a study for my dad.

I have 4 children, but we moved around quite a bit. When we moved to
Key West, the two older girls (2 years apart) shared a room and the
baby (5 years younger) had the third bedroom. This is the way it was
until we moved to RI when I was pg with #4 to a 3 bedroom raised ranch
with a partly finished basement. Then dh and I added two bedrooms in
the basement, and everyone had their own room. When we moved here for
dh to go to Test Pilot School, there were 6 bedrooms, but we turned
one of them into a study and one of them (the little one over the
front hall) became a new bathroom. So the oldest child got her own
room, and the middle two girls shared and ds had his own room. As
soon as dh finished school, we gave her the study as her own bedroom.
When DD#1 got married, DD#3 got her room and we turned her former
bedroom back into a computer room.