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A funny post in a blog called Breed ‘em and Weep got me thinking about room sharing.
She talks about studies that say “that siblings who share a room as kids tend to be much closer as adults.”
Her concern that these studies might then suggest “that siblings who do not share a room will hate each other for the rest of their lives and spit upon each other’s offspring” leads her to a very humorous conversation with her daughter. You really must check it out.
http://blogs.iberkshires.com/BreedEmAndWeep/archives/188
As for the studies, my friend who has 5-year-old twin boys with a 2-year-old little brother found that moving the younger siblings crib into the twins’ room really helped them attach to the little guy. Up until that, he had tended to be more of a toy they could throw aside at their whim. The room trick worked wonders and now the 2 year old is part of their inner posse.
Now I am sure that doesn’t mean you can put warring factions in a room together and they will miraculously bond, but it seems like an interesting idea.
My twin sister and I shared a room until we were sixteen and yes we are a close now, our husbands might argue too close. In fact they might like to go back in time and force our parents to build another room.
But it wasn’t all rosy back in that room. We were so desperate to get rid of each other we devised elaborate floor plans of how to build a dividing wall. (Early versions included a slide to connect the new room to the existing door. We were creative children.)
By thirteen we were ready to kill each other from twin overload. But in a house with four kids, rooms aren’t that easy to come by. Some days we resorted to turning the walk-in closet into a bedroom for one of us. But then the fistfights for who had to sleep in the closet erupted and Susan, although smaller, is really scary and surprisingly strong. I wasn’t too fond of the closet and eventually went back to my bed.
So we had to wait, and wait, until our older sister finally moved out.
But in the end, the upside of our 16 years of co-habitation is we are really good at sharing.
Teething says
This was a great article… I really like the way that you described the teething problems that you and your sister exprienced. Your sibling rivalry was typical of that of many kids… I am sure. But the way that you described it had me laughing in stitches. (Especially the part about your husbands wanting to go back in time) The lesson that you both learned about sharing is an important one.
Teething