Building Relationships: Room Sharing

Last week I began a series on helping build sibling relationships in our children. First and probably foremost we have to be examples to our littles. They watch everything we do and make connections between the relationships we have with the relationships they are developing. Read more about being an example in my last post. 

Another way to build cooperative skills is to create opportunities for skill building. This idea might be met with initial hesitation but trust me it’s not as difficult a process as it seems. A great way for little ones to spend time together is through room sharing. There’s no question, small children have no concept of personal space which suits great when you want to put them together in a bedroom. They’ll likely take a few days to adjust and then from there you may be surprised how well they do sleeping together without waking each other up. Our girls began sharing a room when Sadie was 9 months old. Macie Jane was just over 2 1/2. I think I held my breath for the first two weeks but I’m telling you, honestly, it really wasn’t bad. Now they have the sweetest little conversations at night after we put them to bed. Our rule is they must stay on their own beds but we leave a small lamp on for them to read or talk until they fall asleep. (After falling asleep we go in an turn the light off.) I firmly believe this is a sacred place of childhood memories. There are times when they have conflict but room sharing provides the perfect opportunity for them work through it. Sometimes they need a little support from us but for the most part they can work through things on their own even at 2 and 4. 

What are your thoughts on room sharing? I’d love to hear your successes or adventures in teaching your littles to share! 🙂