Siblings Sharing a Room - Aubrey,TX

My girls technically have their own rooms. But my 9 year old has 2 twin beds in her room, so her 7 year old sister has been sleeping in there for years, by choice. Luckily I have the option to separate them if need be (as in "If you two don't go to sleep I'm separating you!!") but I rarely do it. It's actually the 9 year old who can't stand the thought of her little sister not being in there with her. Sometimes when I walk by their slightly open bedroom door I listen to the chatter. It's absolutely a beautiful thing. I think the memories they are making will be priceless when they are older. They tell stories, and the other night I actually heard the older one trying to teach the younger one multiplication. Too funny :)

I don't know a book, but I can tell you that my girls shared a room and my boys shared a room when they were growing up.

Sometimes it took them longer to fall asleep at night (I may never know of everything they did or talked about!), but that wasn't much of a difficulty in the long run.

And... when they all went to college, they were already used to sharing space, so they didn't have the difficult dormitory adjustments that some other students had.

When you talk to your children, you need to tell them not that they HAVE to share a room, but that they GET to share a room.

Well I shared a room with an older sibling.
I HATED it.
It was oil and water.
My sibling, just picked on me, bothered me, controlled the room, and was so so so, unpleasant. It was torture. And I didn't get sleep.
sorry, but it was just a noxious situation.
I don't recommend it, unless developmentally and emotionally, a child is able to do that.
Not all kids can share a room.

We only have a two bedroom home, so we really didn't have an option. We kept our younger son in our room until he was about 18 months and our older son was almost 4. I honestly don't remember what we said. I think it was something along the lines of, "Guess what! You're brother's moving in with you! Isn't that great?"

We also bought bunkbeds, and the boys have done great with them. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you are excited and positive, they will be, too.

My boys are 4 1/2 and 6 and share a room. We have a 4 bedroom house, and lots of space out of their room for them to play (inside and outside). Our basement is only kid-zone. So most of their toys and inside playtime is spent down there.

They love sharing a room. They have similar interests, are close in age, and get along well most of the time - so sharing space so far is not an issue.

My favorite thing they do, is as soon as they wake up in the morning, they play together in thier room. They either play cars or with the stuffed animals they sleep with. It's great as a parent to wake up to the two of them playing so nicely together.

J.

Bunk beds are extremely dangerous. My friend lost her young son, he was in elementary school, when he fell off the top bunk and hit his head. He died just because he was getting in bed and miss stepped, he was not wresting around or being goofy, he just fell off....your kids ages are way too young for bunk beds anyway.

my son and daughter still share a room, though i think it will be ending soon :( but i will tell you that although they often fight all day long, sometimes i hear them whispering and giggling in there at night "secretly" and i want to cry with happiness because i feel like its the one time that they are really like that together

My boys have always shared a room. We live in a 4 bedroom plus guestroom house. They are teenagers and still share a room. I've offered to help them move their stuff around so they can each have their room and they've turned me down. Instead, they turned one extra bedroom into a study, the other is the lego building room.

Growing up, I always shared a room with my sister who is 1 1/2 years younger than me. Two other sisters shared the bedroom next to ours. Our parents' bedroom was on the other side of the house so we thought they couldn't hear us. We'd talk and laugh with eachother way past our bedtime and often get ourselves in trouble by continuing to giggle after mom-warning number 3. She'd then come in and whack all of us with the ruler (not very hard - just to make her point). Then we'd giggle more quietly after she left.

My parents still live in the same house we grew up in. A few years ago, my sister and I stayed overnight there in our old bedroom. Of course we stayed up talking and giggling way past our bedtime. Some things don't change even after 30 + years.

Sharing a room can be great, but I recommend some flexibility. I shared a room with my younger sister. We learned how to work things out for the most part.

After we were grown, I found out that our older sister always felt let out. My younger sister and I were 18 months apart and my older sister was 4 1/2 years older. How nice it would have been if we had all talked. We could have switched out! It might have been good for all of us. We would have developed a little independence and perhaps we would have grown closer to our big sis. Perhaps we would have all ended up in the same room - one big slumber party.

Often when children our teenagers, they need some autonomy. It is a good time for them to have separate rooms. My little sis and I shared everything: a room, clothing, and friends. People tended to treat us as one.

I remember having a disagreement with a friend and so I went home and went to my room. The friend followed me home with my sister. They followed me into every room including my bedroom. I couldn't get away. Uuugg! Everybody needs to be alone every once in a while.

PS. Every Christmas Eve we crawled into the same bed and cuddled up so that we could calm ourselves to sleep. We even did it in our 20s, so I do think that it brought me closer to my sister.

We too have plenty of room for our three girls to each have their own room, and my oldest we actually MADE go into another room because she was starting school at a different time than her sisters. The second school was out, she was back sleeping in the room with her sisters. They absolutely love being together. They're close in age, so maybe that's the difference. Also we don't have assigned beds! They rotate who sleeps where so it's always fair. :) Good luck and congratulations on #3.

We moved our older two sons into a room together when I was six months pregnant with #3. Ours were 5 1/2 and 3 at the time. We started talking about it a month or so beforehand and played it up in a really positive way, without even mentioning the reason it was happening. We told them it was going to be so much fun to share a room because they could talk to each other before falling asleep, share their toys, etc. We chose to move the oldest one into the younger son's room to make it less disruptive to the 3 year old.

We bought bunk beds from IKEA - the one that has a wall all the way around the top - and picked out brightly colored bedding, a matching toy box, curtains, etc. My parents took the kids for a weekend and we moved everything and redecorated while they were gone. We organized all of their board games and hung stars and planets on their ceiling. They got home and were SO excited to come look at their new room!

They've been sharing a room now for a year and a half and overall it's worked out well, but we do sometimes have the oldest one fall asleep in our bed and then move him to his bed - otherwise they'll talk for two hours before falling asleep.

The only problem we've encountered is that our oldest son is a heavy sleeper and occasionally wets the bed. It's very hard to change the sheets on a top bunk in the middle of the night! :-)

D0 NOT put your 4 year old in a top bunk bed. He is way too young! Please, do the research, then you will know I'm not overreacting. My 12 year old has a loft bed and my 4 year old always wants to go up. One day she decided to try by herself. She fell off the ladder and hit her head; thank goodness it wasn't serious but it just firmed up my opinion that young children and high beds don't mix.