There are many benefits of having your kids in a shared bedroom. Of course, in my personal experience, having three kids share a small bedroom isn’t always easy. But having kids share a bedroom can also lead to rich character development and intentional family practices. So there truly are some great things about it!
We live in a small space (I’ve done a whole series on our current house which you can check out if that interests you). We currently have three children sharing a bedroom – our six and four year old girls, and our 20-month-old son. We’re expecting baby #4 soon, so in about six to eight months time, we plan to transition to having the baby also sleep in the kids’ room.
Pros and Cons of Having Kids Share a Bedroom:
Of course, it isn’t always convenient or simple to have kids sharing a room. Sometimes getting everyone to sleep at night is a bit hectic! And having space confines can necessitate making tough decisions about what to keep and what to not keep.
BUT, having grown up sharing a room with two sisters, I also think there are definite benefits for kids to learn to share a bedroom space with each other. They learn to compromise, they learn to prioritize what they keep, and there are so many opportunities to develop deep sibling bonds. (I have fond memories of chatting with my sisters late into the night as we discussed books or boys or our parents.)
Sharing a bedroom (and a small space as a family) also allows for increased socialized contact within the family, and if that socialization is emotionally positive, it can result in lifelong benefits.
Another big benefit for our family is that when we travel or visit people (particularly for extended amounts of time, which we do when we travel back to the USA to visit our families), we can make do with minimal bedrooms since our kids are used to sharing their space.
And since housing costs where we live here in New Zealand are HIGH, there is a financial benefit to keeping our space footprint relatively small.
But I don’t think having kids share a bedroom is necessarily automatically peaceful without some intentional steps. Here are 5 tips that we’ve developed for how we experience the benefits of a shared kids bedroom and make this work for our family:
1. Cultivate a sense of family sharing, empathy, and an open-door lifestyle
We emphasize in our house that bedroom doors are to be left open during the day. We do close the kids’ door during nap time and at bedtime to cut down on noise and light in their room, of course. And I want my kids to be able to go someplace to retreat and get a break from each other (or from me, if needed!). But I don’t support them developing a sense of entitlement to an entire room of their own.
What we do support and emphasize is:
- clear communication
- making respectful appeals of each other
- honoring each other by trying to accommodate each others’ needs
Yes, sometimes a child will retreat to their bedroom and shut the door if they have communicated respectfully that they need some space. And yes, sometimes I send a child to go hang out on their bed and look at books so they can have some introverted time.
But overall, bedroom doors are open and relational interactions are the priority over kids being able to run away from conflict. For me, demanding that people tiptoe around or stay out of a certain space due to selfishness is not something I can endorse. So one of the big benefits of a shared bedroom for us is that it prioritizes cultivating open, proactive communication and generosity within our family unit.
2. Minimize the stuff to reap the Benefits of a Shared Bedroom
This tip is probably pretty obvious, but I don’t think it would be possible for multiple kids to share a bedroom the size of my kids’ bedroom and enjoy it if we didn’t intentionally curate the stuff we keep in their room.
My kids have a collection of treasures, but we have space-boundaries where they are free to keep anything that fits in the space. So for Mara, she has a couple bins and her desk organizer up on the shelf in her closet. Jemma has fewer treasures, but she has a handful of comfort items she likes to have, which have to fit on her bed when she is in it.
Clothing needs to fit in the dresser drawers or hang in the closet. And toys and books need to fit on their designated shelves. If things start to overflow out of those space boundaries, then I sit down with the child and we prioritize what to keep.
Mara and I have done this several times with her clothing, as she’s gotten a lot of hand-me-downs. At first, it took a long time and was challenging for her to decide what her favorites were. But we’ve figured out a process and now she is both efficient at it as well as eager to sort through and organize her stuff so it all fits neatly in her space boundary without overflowing or getting too jumbled.
For us, another big benefit of having a shared kids bedroom is that we curate our stuff very intentionally and we have been able to teach our kids the value of doing so as well.
3. Establish Routines and Habits That Work For Your Family
I’m a big believer in envisioning what you want your home to be like, and then making an action plan to move toward that goal. Once you implement the action plan, you can observing how those actions are working, and then tweak along the way.
For us, in the context of having the kids in a shared room, this currently means Gabe or I get Lazlo out of the room as soon as we hear him waking up in the morning. The girls will usually sleep 20-40 minutes later than Lazlo. So we prioritize getting him out of the room so he isn’t waking them up.
Lazlo is the only child that currently takes a nap every day. So after lunch the girls get anything they want to have for the next few hours out of the bedroom. They know that if they don’t get it out then, they won’t be able to have it during nap time. (Or they’ll at least have to wait until Lazlo is in a deep sleep before they can sneak in).
Then, when Lazlo goes down for his nap, the girls and I have a routine of keeping the house extra quiet for 20-30 minutes. Often, this is either a read-aloud time, or I’ll work on lunch clean up and dishes while the girls go play outside.
For bedtime, we usually put Lazlo to bed first. Then we spend 30-45 minutes with the girls cleaning teeth, reading, praying, and having them use the toilet one more time before they go to bed. Usually (but not always!) this means Lazlo is asleep before the girls go into the bedroom to crawl into bed.
4. Maintain Flexibility and Creative Problem Solving
Routines and habits are great! But… also, kids change developmentally, different seasons of life have different challenges, and some days are just harder than others! So finding the graceful space of working toward routine but keeping flexibility an option is essential.
Tonight, for instance, Lazlo wasn’t asleep when the girls went to bed. So he got wound up and excited and started being talkative and noisy. This meant 90 minutes of creatively trying to make it work for the girls to get to sleep. We coached the girls through being patient. And we empathized with how challenging it can be to be tired and have a little brother that is making it difficult to sleep. We utilized the sleepout for awhile to take Lazlo out of the room. And we reminded each other that this is just one night in this season of life. We’ve had a few days that have been off of our normal routine, but this too will pass. And we can try and make intentional adjustments tomorrow.
There have been seasons that we’ve needed to do things differently. In our old apartment, we kept a spare crib mattress in the bottom of Gabe’s and my closet. Then we could easily relocate Mara when Jemma was making it hard for her to settle down. We’ve also utilized moving a noisy child to our bed for 30-45 minutes to allow the other kids to get to sleep. Sometimes, it does feel hectic! But the vast majority of the time, all three kids go to bed and sleep in their shared bedroom smoothly. And thankfully, nap times are executed pretty seamlessly!
So, one benefit of a shared bedroom is that it keeps us exercising our creative problem solving muscles!
5. Empower Kids to Take Ownership and Responsibility for Their Shared Bedroom Space as a Team
The girls have a morning chore chart and an evening chore chart. Their morning chore chart has some room-specific chores. It has been fun to see how they take pride in making their room look nice each day. They also have helped me organize their drawers and their closets. (They choose where to put each category of clothes and which shelf to put which basket of toys on). This has resulted in them feeling a sense of ownership of their room’s condition. And therefore feeling some responsibility for keeping their room tidy.
Since they know where everything belongs in their room, if I say, “Please put away your clean laundry and tidy your room,” they know how to do that. But I think a big part of that is keeping the number of items fairly minimal. So at the point the baskets or drawers start to get full, we try to do a weed-out! (Speaking of which, it’s probably time to do minimize from the state of Mara’s drawer pictured above!)
Regardless, it makes for a smooth family dynamic and empowered children when we share the responsibility for keeping various parts of our home tidy and pleasant to experience. And one of my favorite benefits of a shared bedroom is that the kids have a built-in time of working as a team everyday.
Final Encouragement
Please be encouraged: there are many, many benefits to having kids in a shared bedroom. And those benefits are for the whole family. Some will be more of the long-term character growth, and some will be short term simplifying or developing creativity! But I truly believe with intentionality and some strategy, having kids share a bedroom is an investment that will reap benefits for many years. And it’s a great way to force yourself to minimize and live small!
Do your kids share a bedroom, or did you grow up in a shared bedroom? What has or was your experience like? Let me know in the comments below!
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