closed door policy?
Now that my young daughter is walking and way more mobile now, she's starting to get into everything. My 3 1/2 year old son has gotten into the habit of closing his bedroom door to keep her out. I want to respect his personal space, but at the same time, I don't feel comfortable that his door is closed. I grew up in a household where it was not ok to close your door (cause my parents always wondered what I was hiding).
However, should I let him close his door? If not, how do get his little sister to respect his personal space and not rip apart his train tracks and other toys? Or do I just tell him to deal with it?
4 Answers
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Personal space? For a 3-year old?
My three kids sleep in the same room. Sharing the space may be a better learning experience - about sharing and respecting each other. They set up rules themselves for when they do need some privacy.
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I don't have any helpful thoughts on doors I'm afraid, at least not until my son clues in to that as an option ;) But as to younger sisters and trains... we have experience there!
One thing I learned from a neighbor when my son was 1 and playing with his daughters, age 3 and 5ish at the park... Our clever neighbor set up the play from the start as the girls' job was to build the sandcastles, and my son's job was to knock them down. Amazingly ;) my son knew just how to play this game. It quickly became the 5-year-old made the castle, the 3-year-old pointed out to my son where the new castle was, and 1-year-old toddled over and knocked it down. Everyone was happy and engaged.
From this I learned that we can set expectations with older kids about what the younger ones will do, and things may go a bit better. So, my son (now almost 3) understands his sister is "an earthquake" that one can expect to knock train bridges over, can expect to do a lot of repairing of tracks when his sister is around, and can either engage sister with a train of her own or call out to parents to remove said sister when the earthquake becomes tiresome.
it works maybe 75% of the time anyway ;)
Wow, thanks for the perspective. I have since thrown a towel over the top of the door so my son can't close the door at all. And I tell him he has to deal with his sister for at least 5 minutes before I will try to redirect her. But what has generally happened is that little sister will find something else in his room to occupy herself, my son forgets about the 5 minutes, and they end up playing in parallel together quite nicely.
- aknitter, Apr 3, 2010