Kids Have Their Own Bedrooms for a Reason

I am pleased to announce that after six years of having at least one child in my bedroom at all times, everyone in my household is now sleeping in his or her own room. And it really wasn't as hard a transition as I anticipated.

We've tried this before. When Brother first made the move to a toddler bed we tried it. We were in our little 778 square foot condo downtown. We were all so close anyway, we thought it would go over pretty well. It didn't. The only way he would fall asleep in his room was if Jamie or I laid on the floor holding his hand until he'd been asleep for a few hours. If he'd only been asleep one hour when we got up, Brother would immediately sit up and start screaming. Once we moved to house #1 we tried it again. This time I tried to include him and tried to encourage some independence. He picked out a bed tent and told me he would sleep in his own room if he had the super cool Lightning McQueen bed tent. Never take a four year old at his word. I'm sure he meant it at the moment, but that first night we put him in the bed/tent, he was velcroed to my leg before I could turn the light off. It was a struggle including many nights of Jamie or me sleeping on the hard floor next to his bed all night long, but he finally started sleeping in his own room on his own. He even let us leave the room while he was awake and fell asleep on his own. One week later the transformer outside his window blew up. Not the cool robot transformer, he would have thought that was awesome, the power transformer bringing power in to the house from the street. It just happened to connect right outside his window. From across the hall Jamie and I saw a blue flash of light and a loud boom. At the same time we heard a toddler's scream and a little boy diving headfirst into my bed. Brother didn't sleep by himself another night in that house.

With all the transition from that house to our new house (we lived in an apartment for a few months in between) we didn't try too hard to get him in his own room. Baby was born in the middle of all of it to add a little more to our plates. (A welcomed side dish.)

Baby was a good sleeper. By about eight weeks she was sleeping most of the night. As soon as we started bragging, she hit a growth spurt and started demanding food every three hours around the clock. The growth spurt passed but she had gotten used to her midnight snacks - both of them. At her latest check up we consulted her doctor and he assured us that she should be able to fast for eight hours and we wouldn't be bad parents if we tried to stretch her feedings out that long at night. Jamie and I shared a look of hope and decided it was time to take our bedroom back.

Baby was easy. We just laid her in bed one night and that was it. We got a really nice camera with great night vision on it. So we could watch her every move. It's very entertaining at times. This morning I watched her pick her head up, look around for her pacifier, pick it up, pop it into her mouth, and go right back to sleep. Even with the camera though, I missed her. I realized part of the reason they both had stayed in my room for so long was because of me and my need to be near them all the time.

Parenting is a complicated dance of constantly wanting to be with your children and constantly wanting your own time and space. When I do have time away from them, I feel guilty for leaving them and longing to be with them again. Letting go is hard. Taking Brother to kindergarten was the same type of feeling. I want him to grow up and become his own person, but I want to keep him with me as my baby too. I was okay with his first day. I didn't even cry. About a week into school on the first day I didn't have to drag him out of my car with the help of the teacher on bus duty, I hugged him and told him I loved him and he took off running. He ran all the way down the long sidewalk and into the school and never looked back, not even a quick over the shoulder glance for his mommy. I cried that day. That was a step towards his independence. Not sleeping on the floor of my bedroom was another step.

Getting brother into his own bed took careful planning. When I first asked him why he didn't want to sleep in his own bed he had a one word answer. Zombies. That might be my fault. He has never seen an actual zombie movie, not even close. The boy is obsessed with Plants vs. Zombies, though. He loves the zombies. He pretends he is a zombie. I thought he could handle the truth, and he caught me off guard. He was firing off questions and I was trying to answer them as honestly as I could in a way he could understand.

"What does Baby say when she sees me play Plants vs. Zombies?"

"What does the Zombie say when the squash jumps on his head?"

"What does sunflower say when the zombie eats him?"

"What's a jalapeno?"

"What's the jalapeno say when he burns the zombies up?"

"What's a zombie?"

I had been doling out answer after answer, some answers were creative and imaginative, some were simply, "I have no idea. What do you think he says?"

But I knew the answer to the zombie question. I didn't have to think about what an inanimate object would say to another inanimate object. "It's when someone dies and then comes back to life, except they only want to eat people's brains."

After that answer, the questions stopped. I looked up. He was still watching his game, but the widened eyes and nervous smile told me I'd crossed the line. Too much honesty from a parent can be just as dangerous as too little honesty. I tried to reassure him. "They're not real. You know that, right?" He shook his head in agreement, but I knew that he didn't believe it. After that he started having occasional nightmares. He would wake up crying and he would tell me he had a bad dream but he wouldn't tell me what it was about. One night he finally told me that it was zombies who were haunting his dreams. Great. I mentally and sarcastically patted myself on the back.

With all of this in mind I approached the subject carefully. I made sure that Brother knew about the revolutionary new zombie resistant paint out on the market. Once the walls are painted, they can't come in the room, they disappear as soon as a toe creeps over the threshold. He hadn't heard about it. Next I let him pick the color. I promised myself I would go with any color he chose. I wanted his room to be his own. So I crossed my fingers hoping he wouldn't say black - the color he usually picks. He chose gray so that it would look like the Death Star. I could live with gray. That's all it took. One creative lie and a little control over the design.

The first night, I laid down with him. He pretended we were inside the Death Star. He threw his arms around me and said, "I love you so much, Mommy. Can we sleep inside the Death Star every night?" I answered with an emphatic yes.