AIBU to give DD (7) the downstairs bedroom?

[girlrunningoncheese]

We have DD1 (6), DS (4) & baby DD2 (6mo). For now, the baby sleeps in our room but we’d like to move her into her own room over the next few months. The dilemma is, we have 3 bedrooms upstairs and a 4th (/reception room) downstairs. It’s a weird layout but the rooms/house are big and spacious - this was the compromise to get a house the size we wanted!

my question is, would it be wildly dangerous/mean/isolating to give DD1 the downstairs bedroom? It’s big and light, but I’m worried she’ll feel scared or lonely downstairs on her own. She’s quite sensitive (which is why I haven’t asked her opinion yet) but also sensible and not particularly wild.

I don’t really want me and DH to move downstairs, at least until DD2 is older and doesn’t need us so much at night. And I would rather that the kids don’t share unless there’s no option, mainly because the older ones sleep well and I don’t want them disturbed by a toddler.

YANBU - DD1 will be fine downstairs, you’re overthinking it and loads of kids sleep on different floors to their parents
YABU - it’s not safe to have a 7 yo on her own downstairs (I say 7 as she likely will be by the time we’d move her).

for full disclosure, my parents slept up a different staircase to me when I was a child! (Tiny cottage, not a mansion 🤣) but my sibling was in the room next door to me and it never occurred to us to mind.

I'd have hated this at their age, it's just too young. You need to make the comprises, not your children.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable with anyone sleeping on the ground floor (including me!), but especially not a 7 year old on their own.

My worst home year was when we lived in a ground floor flat; I absolutely hated it and vowed never again.

We sleep downstairs, our 4 DC sleep upstairs. It's a great set up as we get a level all to ourselves. Mine are 18, 15, 10 and 8 though.

Give your 3 dc the rooms upstairs and make the spare room on ground floor your master bedroom.

Adults are best being on the ground floor. We also have a dog on the ground floor so if she needs the toilet during the night it's so much easier for us now! And we have a wet room downstairs. It's great!

Please consider it OP. Honestly I am never moving back up.

We moved DD to the downstairs bedroom when she was 8 so the baby could have the other upstairs room. She was perfectly happy down there and still is.

Pose it excitedly! You are going to make a new play space downstairs. Remove some toys from their bedroom to the downstairs room.
Your house will have a children's sleep room and a children's play room!
Move the older two into the biggest bedroom. They will love sharing. Repaint two walls in their chosen colours.

Use the smallest room for all the nursery things, chair, cot etc. and have baby on their own for three years..

I don't think you will want to sleep downstairs until the baby is at school.

That’s what I was thinking - I know people are saying they’ll love sharing but I’d have hated it at any age as a child, & another poster has a thread running at the moment about her oldest not liking sharing with his brother.

I think unless they’re actually enthusiastic about sharing, you going downstairs & using baby alarms for both the younger ones if necessary would be better.

I disagree with people saying fire is a risk. If you’ve got enough fire alarms (and the ones that yell “fire”) a 7 yr old could be up and out their window (if necessary) really quickly. Or you can get down from an upstairs window and then break hers. It’s children on a floor above me that would worry me in a fire - if the staircase gets blocked there’s nothing you can do to get to them.

I agree with the points abut the child feeling isolated, and just a general sense of not wanting a child alone though.

Agree. I feel happier about DD being on the ground floor if there's a fire as she can go out of her window easily.

OP, you say that none of your children’s bedrooms are big enough to divide, but is your master bedroom big enough to divide, and you move into a smaller bedroom, at least until everyone happy about someone using the downstairs room as a bedroom.

I'd put the 6 and 4 year old together in the biggest room so everyone is upstairs until I'd feel comfortable about moving downstairs. You can divide the bedroom with clever storage solutions.

You have 3 beds, so older 2 share if you don't want to put the baby in there. Or she stays with you.

I wouldn't put such a young child down stairs alone.

Our house is what you have described, and I wouldn’t do it. Unnecessary risks and it would feel isolating for a 7 year old. Especially as presumably her baby sister would steal her bedroom and then she gets banished downstairs. Sounds like a bad option to me. Either you go or the older 2 share.

Or ‘her baby sister would steal her bedroom & she wouldn’t have her own room any more.’

They won't do that though, they will wait for their parents or even worse go looking for them.

We had a house fire, the kids slept through the fire alarms and didn't leave their (upstairs) rooms until we went and got them! Kids assume they are safe until parents tell them otherwise, especially kids with good, solid home lives, they look to their parents for direction in an emergency.

Personally I would sleep downstairs and install excellent baby monitors upstairs and just accept I would be walking up a flight of stairs a couple of times a night for the foreseeable future.

No, not safe.

Not mine, I routinely check she knows what to do in a fire and the fire brigade come to school every year to teach them what to do which always starts with telling them their instincts will tell them to hide but they mustn't do that, they must get out.
And if she doesn't I can break her window from outside to get her out - it'll be more difficult getting her little brother out from upstairs if we can't go down the stairs (there's a ladder under his window so can be done but more difficult)

If she’s 7, you can’t really know how she’d act in an emergency until it happens, no matter what she’s been taught.
7 year olds can’t even really be trusted to cross a busy road by themselves, never mind keep their head in a crisis.

First you NEVER know how anyone will react in an emergency until it happens, child or adult.

The biggest lesson I learnt from firefighters was: throw your kid by the window first, don't expect them to jump after you. That did hit hard.

I routinely check she knows what to do in a fire
might work for yours, but a lot of kids would be absolutely terrified if they are sent downstairs when everybody is upstairs and then have drills about possible fire! Talk about inducing anxiety.

It's not the same feeling at all for a child to go upstairs to their bedroom at night, than it is to stay downstairs when everybody else leaves and go upstairs. Even in a small house.

For many of us, having to take stairs if sleeping downstairs is irrelevant, we would still go downstairs to check on the sleeping child alone when we wake up at night anyway 😂

We have slept on the floor below our young children in a town house, that was fine and never an issue. It was just a set of stairs to go up if they needed us in the night.

I just couldn’t put a 7yr old on a ground floor alone. Logically I know the risks are low, but it just doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.

In your scenario I would either have the eldest share or I would take the ground floor room and out the kids upstairs.

We have a converted bungalow and from the age of about 3 all DCs were upstairs and DH and I were downstairs. We couldn’t all fit either upstairs or downstairs. The main thing I worried about was fires. We had fire alarms in room and hardwired ones on landing.

Could you sleep downstairs and have baby monitors for upstairs ?

She was 8 when she moved to the downstairs room and I felt reasonably sure about how she would react in an emergency, especially after school did a realistic fire drill with no warning, smoke machine to simulate smoke, and main exits blocked off so the children had to think and act under pressure. But tbf I would not trust her little brother, who is 7, to get out by himself if he was in the downstairs bedroom so does depend on the child.

She had been crossing roads by herself for a couple of years already by then, plenty of 7 year olds can be trusted to cross busy roads!