We were right and they were wrong, I knew it all along. I don’t know why my husband and I ever thought that a 7 year old and a 4 year old were wiser or smarter than us. I don’t know why we believed the promises and justifications that left their cute little mouths or why we let ourselves fall for those deliciously beautiful big eyes they both have, again.
But we did.
You might remember a few months ago that we had the great bedroom debacle where we somehow allowed our two boys to convince us that they should be allowed to share a room and have bunk beds. Well 8 months on and I do not think we have had one single straight forward bedtime since. It was quite literally the biggest parenting fail we have made to date. Turns out they didn’t want to share a room “to be close to each other” or “to feel safe” or “to play nicely together in the mornings”. Nope, truth be told they wanted to share a room so that they could dare each other to dive bomb kamakarzi style off the top bunk on to a spare mattress on the floor, they wanted to tell each other stories all night long so no one gets any sleep but most of all, they wanted to argue and fight every night and every morning over who gets what bunk, pillow, teddy, duvet or even which bit of air to breath. I swear to god I have more wrinkles, bags and grey hairs as a direct result of allowing this room sharing to take place.
It doesn’t even stop there. The idea, THEIR idea, was that they could share a room and have a toy room. This has only resulted in two rooms being full of mess and toy explosions without either of them taking ownership, EVER, because quiet frankly it is not just their room and by default, it is therefore not just their mess. Cue yet more arguments. In a bid to have some peace and a full nights sleep without the fear of a full blown fist fight before midnight we have allowed the big’un to sleep in the spare room on occasion. Has this helped? Was this a wonderful parenting solution? hahaha obviously not! This just lead to yet more arguments and another room being destroyed by our gruesome twosome.
Well it’s time we steeped up as parents and took back control of this house because there is no escaping the fact that this IS our circus and these ARE our monkeys, so we have bought a second bed and operation “separate the squids” is a go for this summer.
Wish us look and watch this space as we take on yet another bedroom makeover……
P.S NEVER EVER let your children make the rules!!