Opposite gender sharing a room

Rappel

Sun, Feb 02 2020, 1:25 pm

My problem wouldn't be gender. While an 8 year old and a 4 year old can share a room comfortably, in a few years he'll start wanting some privacy, and she'll still want to use her room for games and crafts. So this arrangement would have to change soon - why not now?

banana123

Sun, Feb 02 2020, 1:42 pm

Ema of 4 wrote:

Would you put your almost 8 year old boy and almost 4 year old girl in the same room for sleeping every night? Why or why not?

Yes. And it's pretty common here, to have them share until one starts puberty.

Elfrida

Sun, Feb 02 2020, 1:48 pm

I have friends who did it a lot older than that. They had four older boys and then a boy and a girl (the youngest) some years after the rest. They felt that they just couldn't crowd all the boys into one room while the girl had a room to herself. (Israeli apartment, three bedrooms.)

They divided the room down the centre with bookcases, so that effectively the room was subdivided into two cubicles. One bookcase faced each direction, so the children could use those shelves and they used the back of the other bookcase as a notice board. Some clothes were also kept in the cubicles, though I think the wardrobe was in common property at the end of the room. The children understood that the two cubicles were private, and didn't just wonder in and out.

No one called it an ideal situation, but they made it work for a long time. At some point they put curtains across the end of the cubicles, to make them completely private. When the older boys joined the army the youngest slept in their room when they were away, and when they got married the youngest finally moved into the boys room. He was well past Bar Mitzvah at that point.

notshanarishona

Sun, Feb 02 2020, 2:41 pm

Depends if you have a choice 😁. If you can give them their own rooms I would. If you only have 1 kids bedroom I don't think it's the end of the world at such a young age.