Kids different genders sharing room or not?

[Bronzeisthecolour]

Moving house. 2 dc aged 9 & 7. Eldest is a girl youngest is boy. Dh works from home ft.

New house has 2 rooms downstairs and 3 upstairs- 1 box room. Trying to sort rooms.

1. 3 bedrooms used as separate bedrooms Dh uses 1 downstairs room as office and other is living room but then no table.
2. dc share biggest bedroom- high-rise beds etc. Small box room is office. 2 rooms downstairs 1 living room & 1dining room.

Kids want to share but I'm wondering if this is best long term. I wouldn't even think about it if both same gender.

Any advice?

She has no idea what's going to hit her in a year or two when she starts puberty and it's really unfair to put her in a position where she's forced to change the status quo because her parents didn't take such a big decision out of her hands.

Yep. But OP says its ok because her DD talks about periods with her

I think sex is a red herring TBH and all children should ideally have private space. My boys are very interested in each other's private parts and 100% would experiment if we didn't keep them apart. Maybe they're unusual but I don't understand why everyone assumes it's only opposite sex you need to worry about

My daughter is 9 and I would not like her sharing with a brother (and neither would she). Your children are different sexes and soon to enter puberty and need privacy.

Yeah, I work with our Canadian companies and I have a lot of calls around dinner time too. I don't have my own office. I deal with it. I either sit at the dining table with a headset on and put myself on mute when I'm not talking, or if my son is having his dinner at the same time and making a lot of noise I take the call in the living room. Either way, you can blur your background. Why does he need three screens to do a call?

The thread is about 2 specific children, one of each sex. In a wider discussion I think you have a relevant point, but I don't think it removes any relevance if sex here.

I think I would take largest bedroom for adults and put a desk area in it for dh to work from home.

Kids have both the smaller rooms.

Downstairs have 2 living spaces. Could have an adult living room/ office and a kids TV/ gaming room/ dining room. It's useful to have 2 entertainment spaces as they grow up, and keeps TV/ computers/ lap tops out of bedrooms.

Is this a house you own or rent? Could you add a garden office? Could you convert the loft or garage? These are long term solutions, I’m guessing you don’t have the spare cash at the moment. We’re converting our garage to give ourselves a better work space.
Does you DH have to work from home? Is there office space is could rent?

Children of different sex should not share bedroom above about 5 years. Your dd will hit puberty soon and would be embarrassed sharing at that time. Avoid the problem by giving them their own bedrooms.

@RosaBonheur it's his job to be on a call and using the screens.

Thanks everyone for input. We will do what we think- nothing is permanent. I won't check this thread again.

It depends. We have a galley kitchen so everything is eaten in the dining room, so that's 2-3meals a day. I also like to sit there to read as I am not big in TV and hate what DH and DD like to watch. I use the dining room table for doing paperwork.

The living room is the one I don't use a lot during the day.

If you have space in the kitchen for a table and enough space to eat all together, great.

Well then he should either work from the office or ask for a pay rise so he can afford a house big enough for him to have his own office space.

This is not a question to me. Ty he children need their own rooms.

@Bronzeisthecolour You clearly just wanted to justify your own decision, and unfortunately are happy to prioritise a dining space over your children having their own bedroom. Really bizarre attitude and fairly pointless to start a thread about if you aren't interested in the advice or experiences of others.

This makes me incredibly sad and angry. Your 9 year old daughter has no idea about what can happen. I didn't either. I knew nothing about sexual matters when I was 10, so the idea that my brother could have a sexual interest in me was not even in the realm of things I was thinking about. It was clearly the same for my parents, as otherwise, they would not have instituted an open door policy. After it happened, I was disappointed in my mother for not protecting me. I couldn't have anticipated anything like that at my age (I was also very naive, looking back) but she was an adult and should have anticipated it. You can't leave the decision up to your daughter because she doesn't know the implications of such a decision. If my mother had come to me when I was nine and said we're short of bedrooms, would I mind sharing with my brother, I would have agreed too as I would have had no idea what that would entail. At that age I wouldn't have been thinking about my sexual vulnerability, I would have been thinking how nice that we can play and chat together at bedtime.
My brother was a quiet, thinking type. Responsible, sensible, considerate. The type adults call angels or model student. The reason I keep bringing this up is to dispel the myth that children who sexually molest their siblings have to be weird, damaged or sexually deviant in some way. They don't. The reason these kinds of things happen is that a child gets sexual urges or gets sexually curious and the only person available to them to satisfy such urges or curiosity is their sibling. At that age, they wouldn't have a girlfriend/boyfriend that they are engaging sexually with, but a sibling is at home with them all the time, sleeping under the same roof and usually completely oblivious to the possibility of being assaulted. And for a child that doesn't know how to deal with sexual urges that are happening to them for the first time, the prospect of looking at or touching a sibling is irresistible.

@OneTimeUseName so sorry that happened to you. I am fairly confident that my just turned 7 year old ds will not try to do anything like that to his big sister. She us a confident girl and is educated enough to know about sex, puberty, emotions etc. She will have a private area screened off in the room, which is large enough easily for them both to have their space.

Sorry, OP, but parents are very naive about this sort of thing when it comes to their own children.

@wherethewaterisdarker

No, the UK does not tell private citizens where they can sleep in their own homes 😂

If there's such a law I should hope the state offers to pay for parents to have access to a house that permits it !

Meanwhile, in the real world, OP your biggest mistake was asking on here. MN have a weird hangup about siblings sharing 🙄

It is in fact perfectly fine. If/when they change their minds you can reorganise then. Moving a few pieces of furniture around really isn't that hard.

It's not perfectly fine though.
I made my kids share a room for 12 months. Primary age kids. And they experimented sexually.

It's not safe and it's not OK. I talked to my kids openly about boundaries and such. I never thought this would happen.

I have to live with this forever. As do my kids. Police. SS. Teachers. Everyone knowing what went on. The judgement.

Just because I thought they were too young to mind sharing.

I really don't think you can have them sharing. How big is your bedroom? If it's large enough, wouldn't the simplest answer be to set a desk up in your bedroom and put a bookshelf or something behind it so that it isn't obvious he's working from a bedroom? That way you'd keep your dining room and the DCs get their own rooms. Or get one of those tables that you fix to the wall on a hinge and they fold down for mealtimes and back up when you're done? For all the reasons given by PPs, I'd do literally anything other than have them share a bedroom.

I had b/g Sharing. Got on well but stopped aged 10 even though it meant we no longer had a living room.

Sibling to sibling sexual abuse sadly happens...