Familiarity Can Breed Content in Children

When Julie and William Heflin moved into a spacious new home last year, the four children were tucked into only two of the house’s six bedrooms. Close quarters, the parents figured, would foster life lessons in sharing and cooperation.

“My husband’s one of 13 children,” Julie Heflin said. “For him, it’s a matter of principle for the kids to share, and they don’t mind.” On weekends, she said, their three boys and one girl, ages 11 to 4, sometimes pile into one bedroom.

Experts in child development would say the Heflins are on to something, and many suggest that other families with space to spare consider doubling up the kids, at least for a while.

“Children who share rooms learn a lot about give and take. It can be early training for college, for jobs and for marriage,” said Patricia Dalton, a clinical psychologist in Washington. “Kids have to learn to work things out on their own, and what better place to do it than their rooms?”

There are benefits for the rest of the family too. Space gained when children share a bedroom can be put to other uses, such as a quiet zone where parents or kids can read, work or just watch a few minutes of TV alone.

“The extra bedroom can be made into an away room, a retreat for parents and children,” said North Carolina architect Sarah Susanka, author of “The Not So Big House,” a 1998 bestseller that has made her something of a celebrity on the subject of living well in less space. “It can become a place where you can close the door for quiet activities or for the TV.”

Many parents put each child in a separate room without giving the issue much thought. Of American families with children, eight in 10 have one or two younger than 18. And the average home in this country has three bedrooms, according to 2000 census data.

George Scarlett, chairman of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., said one of the striking differences between American culture and most others is the way we segregate children from adults.

“Other cultures think we’re almost abusive in the way we put children in separate bedrooms at night,” Scarlett said. “Family beds are commonplace in other parts of the world. Shared rooms are certainly the norm.”

After they start sleeping through the night, babies are perfectly suitable roommates for older siblings. “Sharing a room eases certain issues for children--feelings of aloneness or isolation. It can help them with their sense of attachment and security,” Scarlett said.

The kids might need to negotiate about which shelves will house whose dolls and Legos, but in the process they’ll learn to acknowledge another’s needs, possessions and wants.

And as the Heflin family hopes, sharing space can trim any budding notions of entitlement, as children work out conflicting schedules, and different needs. “It doesn’t always go smoothly,” Julie Heflin said. “My husband and I still laugh about the masking tape that divided his space from his brothers’ when they were little.”

Architect Susanka said there are many tricks parents can use to create a sense of privacy in a single room. She suggests placing a fort made of sheets in the middle to divide the space. Personalized chairs, a shimmery shower curtain, a folding screen or even a dresser can be a divider.

“Children are much more flexible than adults when it comes to defining privacy,” she said. “It’s hard for adults to get out of their preconceived notions about space and privacy, but children naturally gravitate to cooler, smaller spaces. That’s why they love bunk beds.”

Even very small spaces can work as bedrooms. Susanka tells of one family in which a teen wanted his own room, but there was no affordable way to renovate. So the parents allowed him to create a room in the attic. Though he’s too tall to stand upright there, the boy covered the walls with posters, put his mattress on the floor, and made it work. “It bothers the parents a great deal that he can’t stand up,” she said. “But their son loves it. He calls it his cocoon.”