Massive room for 3yo -AIBU

[funkky]

Just after some advice and to get people's thoughts.
Scenario: 4 bedroom house and two Massive bedrooms, one tiny bedroom and study.
I currently have a ds in the tiny room and he is 3, and a dd 3 months old in cot in the master bedroom with Us.
I think both kids should share the second big room till they are around 10? ish. To help them bond and mainly because I can't imagine ds all there by himself at this age in the massive room. When they are older, dd can move to tiny room while ds retains big room.
Dh thinks it's not worth the hassle and to just put 3 yo in big room now and baby by herself in small room when we move her at 6 months. He also thinks bedtimes will be easier if they are apart than together plus not keen cause they are different sexes??

This is more a what do people do tbh as if they were both the same sex, we both agree they would definitely be sharing the big room. It really is massive even bigger than our master bedroom and if we ever have guests stay over, they will have to share with ds but at least we can have a spare room for guests if they both share? AIBU?

the parents could have one of the small rooms as a bedroom and the other as a study/walk in closet/dressing rooms with, as a pp said, some cunning storage.

How do you envisage that working when the study is downstairs and the box room Upstairs?

I have boy/girl twins who are now 10. I had this idea they would share until at least 10 but we separated them at 7. It really became a problem as the boy wanted to drop off to sleep early and the girl wanted to read. It was also tricky because I could never have any private time with either of them - one would ask me an important personal question usually about an emotional issue at school - and while I was answering it the other one would start getting involved. Also, children are different and you can't parent two children in an identical manner (according to my parenting course advisor!), so separating them also allowed me to have different parenting styles as we would have private chats in their own rooms.
I also believe separating rooms helped enormously with my bonding with the children. I could have a cuddle and a nice chat about their day with one who felt more comfortable telling me personal things since it was just the two of us.

Also, worth mentioning, without sounding sexist - my daughter has way more 'stuff' than my son so she ended up with the bigger room. His compensation is he has his electronic games in our games room. Which I think is better than having these in his bedroom as I can hear him talking to his friends online while playing playstation.
This has allowed me to monitor inappropriate behaviour ie once I overheard that a friend had invited a complete stranger to join their game and the stranger had started asking my son where he went to school etc so I was able to stop the conversation and explain to him he can't let strangers join in games.

split the big bedroom, i bet it is quite easy to do
no to them sharing

My seven and five year old have their own bedrooms. They want to be in the same room, so much so we bought bunk beds. This started when my son was three. Five nights out of seven they sleep in the same room.

Tbh my issue with parents will take the small bedroom is the fact that for me, a small bedroom is one where you can out a single bed in. NOT a double bed.

As far as I am concerned, if you can put a double bed in a bedroom, it's a double bedroom and is NOT a small bedroom.

So the issue of putting the parents in the small bedroom just shouldn't even come up as they couldn't physically sleep in it!!

E.g. We have 3 bedrooms, two double and a single.
In the single room we have a single bed and a small chest of drawers. So space for a soul bel so we don't have the small bedroom.

It's a very different premises than taking the smallest bedroom that is still a double bedroom.

I have to laugh at the idea of the parents getting the small room (where it's likely that you can put a double bed) and the dcs get the two double bedrooms.

That was my suggestion. OP didn't say how small was the smallest room - in my house, the smallest bedroom fits a superking size bed and a large wardrobe very comfortably. I see no reason to take an even larger bedroom for ourselves, just because I'm the parent and my children won't otherwise respect me. I go to the bedroom to sleep, kids go to theirs to play and entertain friends. Makes perfect sense for them to have more space.

TheSmurfsAreHere

Your post made me smile, I hope I won't come across unpleasant, I don't mean to be.

Are you an estate agent? Frankly, if I can't put a double bed in a bedroom, I call that a cupboard. (Yes, I live in the UK!). I had places with a so called box room, and you could sit fit a double in it (not much else to be fair).

It's a bit of a nuclear option, but in this situation we converted the loft.

We didn't have the study space, though, just a standard 3 bed semi with two doubles an a single. Added a big double upstairs and kept the small bedroom as a study and Lego play room.

SoupDragon was that a genuine question? If so, you walk down the stairs, into the downstairs room and get dressed. We had a downstairs dressing room in one of our previous houses. Unless you have objections to walking around the downstairs of your house in a dressing gown and pj's, its a non issue.

Tbh my issue with parents will take the small bedroom is the fact that for me, a small bedroom is one where you can out a single bed in. NOT a double bed.

Yes that's a good point, we live in the US and all of the houses we've lived in you could fit a queen size bed even in the smallest bedroom.

We do separate rooms until about 2 (as mine decided not to sleep well until then and wake everyone in the bloomin room)

I agree that for me a small bedroom is a single bed room...manbono you don't sound unpleasant, maybe a tiny bit entitled lol...
Anyway we have 2 big enough rooms and 2 smaller one (one of them you can just abt fit a double bed as I've seen one of our neighbours did that lol - wouldn't have thought so but hey). Our girls (2.5yrs and 5.5yrs old) share the bigger of the smaller room (with a bunk bed) and the second big room is used a play room/guest room. The other small room is a study/spare room and the other big room is the master bedroom. Works for us.
But yes a lot of it depends on character of the children (more than gender imo) and the actual sizes we are talking about here! They didn't share when little one was 6months tho, younger DD stayed with us in our bed until 2yrs old or so and then 'moved' in with her sister.

My parents gave my sister the largest bedroom with en-suite when they moved house and she was a teen (I'd left by then). They had a good sized double with no en-suite. There argument was that the rest of the house was theirs so they didn't need the space so much. Plus she wasn't happy about moving so it was a bit of a bribe!

Well mambono that just shows that not all houses are the same.
When we moved where we are, a 3 bedroom house was one with a double bedroom (i.e. One where a double would fir plus a wardrobe of some sort), a single (one for a single bed plus wardrobe, maybe a double if you dont mind not having even a chair in the room) and abox room (that would only fit a single bed, not even a chest of drawer on the top if it).
So our house with two doubles (not big enough for a King size if you want to out something else in btw) and a single looked huge.

This was true for all the houses we visited.
It's still the same for the new houses being build over r the road

And we arent even in the South.

So yes I would be covert careful about the assumption that a small bedroom is still a double. It's nowhere near my experience.

Think we need sizes of rooms and a floor plan op !!

If small room is next to one of the big rooms then removing and repositioning a wall could be an option.

Can only share what has worked for us so far.

We have a 3 bed (2 large doubles & a large single - which you can just fit a double in but nothing else). Downstairs study. Smallest room was the nursery for dd, but we kept her in there when ds arrived 20 months later & made the second bedroom his room.

We've now just moved them in to the second bedroom together (dd is 4, ds 2.5). Small bedroom has become study / spare room (with ikea daybed) & downstairs study now a playroom. It's all worked brilliantly so far (about 2 months in).

Imagine they will share for another 3-4 years, at which point we hope to have moved house anyway but if not I guess we'll flip coin for smaller room or something.

Similar situation

1 big room, 1 medium room, 1 tiny room

Study downstairs with sofa bed!

We have the medium room as I prefer the view. 4yo DD has the tiny room and 10mo DS has the big room. We offered it to DD but she refused to move.

Put them in together for now, then separate them if/when it stops working.

We separated ours when the youngest came out of the cot at 2.4, because he wouldn't leave his sister and her bed alone. Had we not had an extra bedroom we'd have found another solution, but as it was, separating them was the obvious one.

They didn't share for all that long, but they love knowing that they used to and it was lovely for the little one that he didn't really have to be alone at all until he was nearly 2.5.

My younger sister went into the larger room when she was born. It's still 'her room' and the smaller room is still 'my room' despite us not living there for 10 years. I can't say I have ever felt any resentment towards it.

I have 3 girls, aged 13/11/10 and they're all in together. They have been since they moved out of our rooms as tots.

Having that time together every night, just siblings, has definitely made them closer. Sure they have squabbles, but more good points than bad.

If you have more kids then it might make sense to have whatever sex you have more of in the big room, but otherwise is there any way to make the rooms more even? Move a wall, put up a wall (and split the large room, which would also give you a spare room for guests)

I think you should put your eldest in the larger room and youngest in the remaining room or vice versa

Oldest in large room, second in small. They will accept these are their rooms - you will never get any of them to move into the smaller one, especially at age 10.

Seperate rooms all the way, based on the two times I tried it with my two boys, they were so disruptive to each other and disturbed each other all night long that even they dont want to share together, they both want their own rooms.

They can bond in other ways. their own room gives them their own identity.

I really don't think a bedroom can be too big for a child with all the cxxp that they have! My 3 year old DS has a large room which is slightly bigger than his 6 year old brother's. This was the 6 year olds choice as we let him decide which room he wanted between the two when we moved into the house.

Kids sharing a room sounds like a good idea, but in reality it's a nightmare.

My parents had the smallest room and it wasn't because they had no authority or we were spoiled and entitled. They were sensible people who saw that we had toys and loads of crap to use in our rooms, whereas they were in the living room all day and only went to bed to sleep.