What Children Learn from Sharing Rooms.

For my first post with the new blog vision, I want to point you to a wonderful article that I found written by Erika Shupe. Erika is a home-schooled, christian wife, and mother of 9 children. She has a wonderful blog Large Families on Purpose. The article I found on her site was about how sharing rooms produces good character in multiple different ways. So today, please take the time to look at her post. Siblings Sharing Bedrooms: "You have *how* many per room?!"

Above is a picture of the Shupe family, a family with 3 bedrooms. Parents room, boys room, and girls room. Erika says

"First of all,"  Erika says, "sharing bedrooms is very practical with the amount of space the average family has in their home.  Most people have between 2-4 bedrooms in their house.  It makes the most sense for children to be able to share bedrooms.  Especially when the Lord desires, deserves, and expects lordship in our lives in the area of family planning, this often means that we get blessed with a bunch of kids.  But many people, sadly enough, decide that they will not surrender lordship to Christ in family planning because of something so simple as believing that they don't have enough bedrooms to do so.  But this is an untruth from the world and from the enemy of our souls, keeping us in fear and out of obedience and blessing.  God can bless children through sharing their bedrooms."

As someone who grew up sharing rooms with multiple sisters, and now being the only one in the house with my own room, after reading Erika's post, I completely agree with her. Many of the pros of sharing rooms are things that I miss, and I could probably really use that character-building again. Some of the things she list include:

• Selflessness
• Generosity
• Service
• Responsibility
• Self-Control
• Tolerance 
• Loyalty
• Sensitivity
• Flexibility 
• Compassion

It is not an easy thing to build these character qualities, as Erika will tell you, but take the advice of this seasoned mother who really knows what she's talking about. Sharing bedrooms is an incredible way to build character in your children; character that will last a lifetime. 

"Train up a child in the way he should go;
    even when he is old he will not depart from it."