Mixed sex children sharing rooms

Spendless

cooperbob wrote: »

My situation is my 16yo son 5yo son 8 yo daughter and ex wife all sleep in the same room.
I sleep in a double room on my todd and my 18 yo son sleeps on his own in another room .
does anyone feel like me its REALLY not a good thing?

Why are taking up a double room to yourself You sleep in the smallest room, put your 16 yo and 18yo sons into a room on their own, and then your ex w and the 2 younger kids would have more room in theri shared bedroom.

tanith

I'd go even further and say that the three adult males sleep in one room , two small children sleep in one room and wife has room on her own.... only teasing of course but that is certainly a difficult situation to say the least.....:eek:

lauren2007

Hi
when i was little we only had a two bedroom house and i shared a room with my brother until i was seven, he was 8years older than me and it never bothered either of us. (well, not that he has ever mentioned since....).

Lauren

kelloggs36

If you live in privately owned accommodation (ie, not through the council) then there is no law that says there is a certain age that boys/girls can't share. If you live in council rented accommodation then there are regulations that say they can't share beyond the age of about 10 I think. but in your case there is no law, it would purely depend on how you juggled it about. We have just converted our loft which was much cheaper than moving to a 4 bedroomed house - the cost was about half!

cooperbob

Have you ever tried to tell 18 and 16 year old boys they have to sleep somewhere else? !!
Especially when your ex wont back you up?
The biggest room is where the most are sleeping and yes there is a mathematical way of sorting things but its just not happening

Nenen

hobbesy wrote: »

ps. Downstairs is open plan, and small, so no chance of converting a dining room. And room is too small to be looknig at a divider at any point. We won't be able to do this at all without the help of bunks (shorty bunks at that I think)

Our two boys have always shared a room... still do when big bro is back from uni (they are now 21 and 17) and they get on amazingly well. However, until we moved house last week, we created a space for each of them by having two of those high cabin beds made (had to have them made as normal sized ones wouldn't fit in the room). The space under each son's bed (included a desk and drawer unit) was his own little 'territory' with the other son not allowed to go into that space. The rest of the bedroom floor space was shared. Our dd (now 19) had a tiny box room next door but often ended up sleeping squeezed into a space on the floor in her brothers' room! :A :A :A

People often looked at us with great 'sympathy' when we said we had 3 children in a small 3 bed semi... almost as if we were bringing up 12 children in a 2-up 2-down miner's cottage! Most of our children's peers have their own rooms and sometimes appear to pity our children but I have to say (and I admit I'm a teensy bit biased) that we have 3 super well-adjusted youngsters who are all extremely good at sharing, compromise and negotiation (with a little bickering thrown in)!

I hope this doesn't sound too unbearably smug but living together in a small space has meant we are a close family... dh and I celebrated our silver wedding last year and we have been lucky enough to manage to have good relationships with our children too... give or take the odd toddler/teenage moment! They've been been really helpful and supportive throughout some difficult times... particularly when finances have been extremely tight and they haven't been able to have as many material things as many of their friends. My dd rang me tonight (she's at uni too) as she knew I was feeling really sad, having sold the house we've lived in for 16 years. She didn't really want us to leave the village she'd grown up in but told me 'mum, the most important thing is that we are all together as a family'. I wish you and your little family as much happiness and squeezed-togetherness as we have.:j :j :j :j

narnia2000

I feel that the only problem arises with opposite sex siblings sharing when one hits puberty......tends to be later in boys, but for various reasons left to imagination, is embarassing for the individual concerned.

Carmina_Piranha_3

i don't think there is a law as such. councils may put siblings to the top of the transfer list when one reaches the age of 7 or 10 or whatever, but if there isn't a house for them to move into then they don't move.

i was ten and a half and sharing with 9 year old sis, 5 year old brother and baby of around a year old. i think my turning ten might have been the catalyst for the council shifting us, but the rule here was age 7 when my sister's neighbour was looking at moving to a bigger house - and never if your children are the same sex unless you have a lot of them.

if it's your own house it's up to you where people sleep and whether to extend, convert the loft etc.

we're an end terrace and our loft is sloped and tiny, converting it was going to cost the earth because there wasn't enough ceiling height, so an extension was cheaper.

hobbesy_2

Thank you everyone, esp Nenen that was a lovely thought. We were discussing this last night and realised if we moved at the moment and told our ds that his little sister wasn't going to be sharing his room anymore he'd think he'd been naughty!

If we're looking at aiming for about 10 as a cut off limit that gives us 6 years, hopefully at which point all the hard work will have paid off and we could at least afford to stay in a similar area with an extra bed even if we're not moving up particularly. Can't see us ever being that flush.

We are a very happy little family, with definitely no more kids planned, so I'll just relax for now and concentrate my worrying on other things

Keri -x-

looby75

kelloggs36 wrote: »

If you live in privately owned accommodation (ie, not through the council) then there is no law that says there is a certain age that boys/girls can't share. If you live in council rented accommodation then there are regulations that say they can't share beyond the age of about 10 I think. but in your case there is no law, it would purely depend on how you juggled it about. We have just converted our loft which was much cheaper than moving to a 4 bedroomed house - the cost was about half!

There are regulations which seem to vary from council to council but tbh they aren't worth the paper they are written on. Most councils and housing associations just don't have enough 3+ bed properties left, they have all been sold off or left to run into disrepair then demolished and the land sold to private building contractors (or is that just Durham :rolleyes: ) I've been told that even though we are classed as "overcrowded" not to ever expect to be moved because there is just nowhere in the area to move us to.