At what age does your child need their own room/space?

[goldingoddess]

I'm trying to plan for the future here, to see how long we can reasonably hold off on converting our garage into an office for my husband.

As of now we live in a small 2 bedroom house. We just bought it in April and are in the bay area, so bigger was not and is not an option in our budget. As of now we all sleep in the same room and I don't see that changing for quite a while.

My husband needs a dedicated room as an office space because he works from home two days a week and is on business calls at least 50% of the day. Having his office in the bedroom is a non-option because we use the smaller bedroom for our beds, and as it is we can barely close the door with our queen and twin beds in there.

My son's toys as of now are all in the living room with just a few in the limited space of the bedroom. To be honest he doesn't have anywhere near the amount of toys that his friends have (because we just don't have the space)...but we have a huge backyard and that we have outdoor toys in that we spend a lot of time playing with. I fantasize about him having a nice playroom someday, but wonder at what point a playroom, or a room with his own stuff is absolutely necessary. Obviously this will eventually be a shared space because #2 will be here in March.

So at what age do you feel a child truly needs their own space for their things? Right now DS is 2 and 3 months.

[lach]

DD had a nursery that she never slept in and which was basically empty except for all the nursery furniture that we thought we just NEEDED to have. It all stayed that way until #2 came, and she wanted to be able to protect some of her special things from her little brother. She was still young, but never really put things in her mouth and liked little things so she had a bunch of Calico Critters and some nice doll things that neither she nor I had any interest in the baby getting ahold of! So, for purely practical reasons, she started actually using her space around then. Now that we're expecting #3, we're heading down the same path with DS. Right now his room has a crib and a bureau and a shelf with mostly decorative things, and all of his toys are shared toys in the living room. But within a few months (probably around Christmas, as this is the first Christmas that he'll be getting some special toys to be just his own, based on his interests and not just general shared toys) we'll be personalizing his room a bit more.

Around 3, DD also started to enjoy playing by herself a lot more, so it was about then that she really started playing in her room. Often, I think she just enjoys going in there for some quiet, when things are overwhelming for her in the rest of the house. She likes playing noisily with her brother, but she also has a pretty low overstimulation threshhold, and the nice thing is that she's aware of that. When she's feeling overwhelmed she'll announce that she needs a time out, and then go up to her room.

Plenty of kids around the world never get their own space, and they turn out just fine. So I don't think that kids actually "need" it. But I do think that, for us, once there were siblings in the mix it was nice that we can offer each child his or her own space.

[KJoslyn78]

i have 3 kids, and we live in a 3 bedroom apartment, so someone has to share.

right now i'm actually changing the rooms up to having the 2 youngest (ds and dd2) share rather then the 2 oldest (dd1 and dd2, who are nearly 5 years apart in age). dd1 has hit middle/puberty age and is really, REALLY craving more private space, away from the 2 youngest (only 3 yrs apart), who are like peas in a pod right now. ds and dd are both young enough still to share for a couple of years, in which i suspect dd2 to be leaning towards the more "mature"side and her and dd1 can share again. Having all this spec seems surreal to them, as we just spent the last 13 months living in a 1 room efficency (5 of us total)

I think if you can provide a "private space" that is nice, but i dont think totally necessary... as there are plenty of ways to get "alone" even in a crowded space.

[cappuccinosmom]

It's a want, not a need. And it's cultural and preferential, so it will be different ages for different kids.

Starting when I was 12 or so, I wanted a little privacy. I had to room-share with my sisters though, so we used a free-standing closet to create a small personal space for me.

I think it's nice to make sure there's a place where people can "retreat" if they need some quiet, but that doesn't have to be a bedroom. It could be a cozy bunk bed, a quiet corner of the living room, or a tree to climb.

[4evermom]

My poor 9 yo ds still doesn't really have a room! He just started saying he wants one in the past few months so we lasted through age 8. He'd like to be able to hang out in his room with friends. He's old enough to realize that that is the norm. We keep most of his toys in the living room (we're down to mostly just a bookshelf of legos at this age) and closet. So with us, the own room thing is correlated to playdates. If he didn't start having friends over, we'd probably have been able to go to age 12.

So now I finally have to clear out the guest room and paint it...

[Peony]

My kids still don't have their own rooms, there are 3 of them, 7.5 down to 1.5y old. We converted the dining room to a playroom and all their toys are mostly kept in there. 3 years ago DD1 wanted her own bedroom so she got one, today it sits with some toys in it but no bed. I store her clothes in there and that is about it. With 5 of us we are in 2 bedrooms, I take the youngest child and DH has the other two in a separate bedroom. Our goal is to maybe in a year have the then 8 and 5 year old sleep in bunk beds in a bedroom together, we shall see if that will actually happen. Our children don't appear to like to branch out in their own space.