Who should get the bigger room?

[LavanderHills]

Hi All,

I am due to have my second baby this summer. We currently have a little boy who will be two years old when his sister arrives.

Currently, the house set up is our son who is a toddler is in the box (small) room which has the nursery furniture and is decorated in neutral colours, painted walls etc. The cot converts into a toddler bed.

We also have a spare room which has a double bed but will need decorating and painting before the babies arrival. We currently use it as a room for sleeping separately when we work awkward shift patterns so we don’t disturb each other going to bed at different times. When the baby arrives in summer it also means only one of us would get a bad nights sleep as the other person can get some proper rest (we took turns getting proper sleep when our son was born and it worked really well).

We have already agreed that we want both children to have their own rooms once the baby is six months old so have made peace with loosing our spare room, however, from a practical point of view, who should get the bigger second room?

I ask this as I have heard girls usually need more storage space for clothes and toys etc, but then as our son will be two years older he would be able to transition to the room using the furniture that is already there rather than buying two sets of cots/toddler beds etc.

Also, our son loves his room so I don’t want him to feel like the baby has replaced him and stolen his bedroom as he can’t rationalize that a bigger bedroom is better, and I fear he may just feel like he’s lost his room which currently is a good size for him (although not sure how long this will last?).

Again, on the other hand, would he become resentful having the smaller room when he gets older as it would then be unfair to expect the girl to swap and leave the room she is used to?

This isn’t our forever home, however, financially we are still quite a few years from being able to afford something bigger so I don’t want to make a wrong decision that I regret or makes the children unhappy either now or in the future. We could potentially be looking at around 5-6 years before a move depending on work/housing market.

What is everyone else’s experiences? Has anyone been in similar positions to this and what did you find/do? Any advice would be really appreciated!

We moved our 4yo to the bigger bedroom when our second baby was coming. We decorated it with all things she loves and put all of her toys in which she could never have fit in the smaller bedroom and she absolutely loves it.

I appreciate she is older so understands more but we sometimes joke with her now and say ‘what if little sibling wants the bigger bedroom when they get older’ and she is adamant the bigger sister gets the bigger bedroom. She also has much more room to play which has worked out great.

i’d just make it an exciting experience for your 2yo and leave the smaller room for baby.

Do you have a playroom or similar? If not, give the bigger room to your son for playing. Then once baby is old enough, they can use it together for play and he sleeps in it.

My DD1 kept the smaller room when her sister was born. She liked her room and was happy to stay in it. They are now 18 and 16 and she still loves 'her' room and has never been jealous her sister has a bigger one.

See how things go. I would probably aim to move your toddler in to the bigger bedroom by getting him to choose duvet covers/wall stickers etc. However if he is resistant it might be fine to leave him where he is for ease. My DS is 5 and recently got very upset at moving rooms. We were redoing our spare room and offered it to him, as it is bigger than his bedroom. He really didn't want to move, as he feels safer in his cosy room. He tends to play in his sister's larger room or just play downstairs.

Similar age gap here.

I slept in the spare room with baby, as our bedroom wasn't big enough to put a cot in. Toddler in box room. Once baby started sleeping on her own, we put her in a box room, and toddler went into the bigger room.

Then once they were 3 and 5, we got a bunk bed, and put it in the box room, so this was their joint bedroom. All toys went into the bigger room, together with a sofa bed for occasional guests. Worked really well for us. Small children often like sleeping in the same room!

Move your toddler to the bigger room; explain that the new room is a bedroom for bigger children and let him have input into the decoration. He will have more room for toys/playing with friends, which the baby won't need. Even in 5-6 years your daughter won't need more storage for clothes, and that's not a fair reason to make boys have smaller rooms anyway.

Once ours were 6 months we moved them in to the same room. All 3 shared until the oldest was 10. There was a spare room but they loved sharing and would have little chats every night from about 2 onwards. Very cute. Very close now as teens. We used the extra room as the play room.

Our DD was 3.5 years when DS arrived. He slept in our room for the first year ish but in that time we asked DD if she wanted her room (box room) made into a big girl room or if she wanted the bigger room for her new room - she chose the bigger room and that's fine, we got the bigger house when they were 7&11 and both got large double rooms and a bathroom each, never been any issues

I would move your son into the larger room asap. We moved DS1 permanently out of his cot and into a single bed at 21mo (23 month age gap), but would have done it sooner if we could have. By the time DS2 started using the cot at 8mo DS1 had had a solid 10 months of the cot not being his bed anymore. He'd dealt with any "jealousy" towards the baby too. We have 3 bedrooms but DH WFH full time so DS2 was in a travel cot until he was sleeping consistently.

Wanted to add that my kids share, so was in the study in the travel cot until he was sleeping well enough to share.

These are all really good suggestions! Thank you everyone!

I think we will look at starting to get DS ready to transition to the bigger room soon, he is still in a cot so will look at getting him used to the toddler bed first in his room and then moving him to a bigger bed in the bigger room a little while before we would need the small room for the baby!