Does your SC have a room at your house?

[ouesyesh]

Scenario:

Resident children
1 girl (10) going through puberty
1 boy (4)

SS is 14, stays over about 3-4 nights a month.

3 bedroom house. No other additional rooms to turn into a bedroom.

A) Let SS sleep on pull out bed in living room when over
B) Give SS a room - if so what do resident kids do?

@Autumn42

BTW I’m leaving this debate now as purpose of my contributions was to give the perspective from my experience of having a multiple teenager dc and dsc and current young children to the OP, not to argue with people who live in a bubble of not being able to contemplate considering the needs of anyone except themselves and their own precious young dc, especially the needs of theoretical ‘pesky’ sc (sic) :(

Bloody hell, what a patronising comment from the only person here who's been unwilling to consider a different perspective.

Your partner's child needs either own room or some other fixed, permanent place to call their own. Top bunk fine. It's less about sharing and more about being transient. If the little one can't share with your partner's child then the little one needs a bed in your room for the foreseeable; they are too young to care.

It must really suck to come to a parent's house and feel like a guest whilst the resident children bunk down as usual.

[quote Autumn42]@familyissues12345
our 7 year old would still quite happily sleep in our room and who knows by then anyway they might have moved to a bigger house. Then by the time dc is 8 dsc will be 18 and probably not mind being on the sofa bed as he’s not going to be stuck with the family during the day so he’ll just go out and about or to his mums if he wants some chill time. It won’t be such an issue for the mother him doing this either as can leave an 18 year old to for night/weekend, to cook their own meals etc whereas having a 14 year old is quite a different responsibility[/quote]
Lots of who knows in there though isn't it? Who knows their youngest might love sharing with his parents, who knows they might have a bigger place, who knows the 18 year old might not want to stay.

None of that is a given, so may be better to deal with the situation how it stands now?

@RussianSpy101 I agree that a boy and girl can't share of that age, I just don't see why the boys can't share but egh maybe my lived experience is colouring things and I am only one perspective.

@Autumn42 I don't think it's fair or wise to say most DSC are estranged from their fathers because of bedrooms or being made to share. I'm sure there must be some who absolutely couldn't stand it and estranged from family, much like nuclear family or siblings tbh.
You can't make someone feel part of the family and not treat them like royalty visiting. I imagine that actually a fair amount of estrangement comes from treating DSC as royalty/Disney dadding rather than creating healthy boundaries and connections and activity parenting. The easy road isn't the one that ends well here.

I have to be honest with any child there are certain elements that's a like it or lump it type approach, that isn't circumvented by any status, DSC or not, non Nt or not . Like hygiene, sharing, food and living quarter's. Now obviously I'm not saying now DSC like it or lump it your living under the stairs with the spiders or sleep on the floor in lounge (and there was a previous post like this where a lot of the posters here SM and mums said no that's not ok) but it's reasonable to ask children of a house to share if same gender. I don't know many 4 year olds that spend vast amount of time in their rooms, and agreed teenagers spend lot of time their rooms and I don't think it's unreasonable or hard to created they get private area that's just DSC space in a shared room. For us at least the toddler abs teenager wanted to share and that maybe down to them being chilled or most likely them knowing each is equal in this house and therefore not creating a competitive pick me situation.

This is obviously only my opinion but I will say that if I treated my DSC unlike the other children or have special rules for her she would feel very unsettled and would ask why I'm doing that as she wouldn't understand why I would be doing that and feel fairly singled out even if it was for extra privileges (she's non NT) and in my view creating a golden child dynamic is damaging.

I suspect though there's a fair amount of people who don't feel the need to apologise or feel guilty the first family didn't make it so don't feel a burning need to treat DSC a Demi gods or poor children, I suspect a good lump of them just view them for what they are, children.

If you take away the step and just treat kids as kids it's easier to see the adult emotions we put on kids and rarely do the kids give a banana

I don't think a sofa bed in the living room is suitable. Is there a plan of moving to a bigger house in years to come?

As the stepchild I think the best solution would be to take the 4 year old into the parents' bedroom on a blow up bed. As others have said, young DC enjoy this so up until 8 or 9 this could be a good arrangement. The main inconvenience is to the parents rather than any of the DC, which is how it should be.

After that, if a bigger house is not possible, I think the 2 boys have to share a bedroom.

I think it's a mistake to assume the older DC will not stay over once her turns 18. I'd be expecting him and considering it his home until he leaves full-time education, gets a job and rents a house independently.

@BurgerKingAddict

www.diy.com/ranges/building-ranges/alara Would something like this work?

I'm amazed no-one has picked up on this. It's making me look at my place with new eyes!

Few thoughts
Give the boys the biggest room and get creative with plaster boarding to make two separate areas for each boy.
Or
Are you in a home big enough to have a nook somewhere to put a bed with a curtain pulled over (a friend did this for their DD in their upstairs hallway who lived almost all the time with her mum so only needed a bit of space

@SpaceshiptoMars it’s brilliant. It can be taken down when you move home.
I have it in my house.
It’s cost about £520 to do.

[quote BurgerKingAddict]@SpaceshiptoMars it’s brilliant. It can be taken down when you move home.
I have it in my house.
It’s cost about £520 to do.[/quote]
What did you do about the radiators? Did the sliding doors work OK?

Well it obviously makes no sense to cripple yourself financially to get a 4 bed house instead of a 3 bed, just for 4 nights a month so take no notice of the narrow minded privileged MNers on that one. Why would a sofa bed be so bad for a teenage boy? He might like having the living room to himself all night!

The sliding door is fine. You can put a matching handle on it so it blends in with any other doors a bit more.
If we had to fit ours anywhere more complicated like round a radiator I would have paid a professional maybe. Ours was easy to do as we don’t have any obstacles in the way. But if you are better at diy then you could probably do it yourself.
For us it solved the problem of splitting a room with less hassle and expense and we can easily remove it.