DD wants the big bedroom, but I don’t want to give it to her & DH not backing me up

[Anonymous]

Who are you a-holes being so mean to OP? I think her plan makes sense and I would absolutely not indulge my 9 year old child (boy or girl). Plus she says she'll put in girly fancy stuff into her child's smaller room. Your girl gets to design her dream room, tell her you'll do whatever she wants, she'll get over not having the big room SO quickly once you paint her walls the color she wants, put in shelving she wants, bedding she wants, etc...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who are you a-holes being so mean to OP? I think her plan makes sense and I would absolutely not indulge my 9 year old child (boy or girl). Plus she says she'll put in girly fancy stuff into her child's smaller room. Your girl gets to design her dream room, tell her you'll do whatever she wants, she'll get over not having the big room SO quickly once you paint her walls the color she wants, put in shelving she wants, bedding she wants, etc...

So isn't that indulging your daughter, OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who are you a-holes being so mean to OP? I think her plan makes sense and I would absolutely not indulge my 9 year old child (boy or girl). Plus she says she'll put in girly fancy stuff into her child's smaller room. Your girl gets to design her dream room, tell her you'll do whatever she wants, she'll get over not having the big room SO quickly once you paint her walls the color she wants, put in shelving she wants, bedding she wants, etc...

I think OP can safely ignore the childish moron posting poop emojis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP, thanks to everyone for your replies, some of you gave me ideas I hadn’t thought about! To respond to a few points -

- The smaller bedrooms wouldn’t work as guest rooms, they’re pretty narrow and would fit only a full-sized bed at best.

- It’s a good-sized house, but limited on # rooms. Also, I’m not thinking of using the third bedroom only for guests; I’d have the kids use it as their shared space the 95% of the time that we don’t have guests.

- I’m not an evil mom who wants to traumatize DD by ripping out the girly built-ins lol. The built-ins only work for bedroom use and I was thinking they’d be a sore reminder to her of how much she wanted the room for herself. And I figured it’d make more sense to completely redo the room to fit the use, i.e. guest/playroom.

- I said from the get-go that DD would not get the girly bedroom. But DD kept asking, and DH eventually said well, maybe.

I really appreciate the suggestions, I’m going to see if we can somehow rework some of the girly built-ins in one of the smaller bedrooms. But if we can’t, and DD doesn’t get over not getting the bigger bedroom, I’ll suggest to her redoing her room the way she wants. I think she would be THRILLED, and this would be a great compromise.

Given what you say, I would focus on the sticking to the plan. The larger room is the kids' hangout space, and let BOTH kids become invested in decorating it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Omg whhhhhyyyy did you buy this house? It’s essentially going to turn into a nightmare of unnecessary trauma for your DD bc all she’ll remember is how excited she was to get this lovely bedroom and how you prevented her from having it for no reason at all and then took it a step further to destroy and rip out all the things she loved about it rather than let her enjoy it!
That is next level cruelty imo.

Why not just let her have the extra smaller room as a playroom for now and a study/guest room layer?
The sneaking out thing would absolutely never have crossed my mind for a 9 year old. And if she does that even once, then seal up the door. Problem solved!

OMG, that’s too much drama.
It’s a room. Not getting your first choice of a bedroom is not a trauma. A dead parent or a divorce is trauma. This is just life. You get what you get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't even get it. You have a pretty princess room and you won't give it to a 9 year old girl, literally the one demographic that would appreciate it?

Because it doesn’t suit the needs of the entire family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't even get it. You have a pretty princess room and you won't give it to a 9 year old girl, literally the one demographic that would appreciate it?

Because it doesn’t suit the needs of the entire family.

It does suit the needs of the entire family. The mother is being petty. When we were house hunting with 2 kids, I saw several houses where one child’s bedroom was twice the size of the other. I passed on those houses because there would be no way to make it fair. I assume OP liked other aspects of the house enough to purchase it. She made her bed, now lie in it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who are you a-holes being so mean to OP? I think her plan makes sense and I would absolutely not indulge my 9 year old child (boy or girl). Plus she says she'll put in girly fancy stuff into her child's smaller room. Your girl gets to design her dream room, tell her you'll do whatever she wants, she'll get over not having the big room SO quickly once you paint her walls the color she wants, put in shelving she wants, bedding she wants, etc...

I mean, I wouldn’t indulge her if she wanted the master bedroom or to take over what’s typically a shared space.
But telling her that she can’t have the big room because she can’t have a bigger room than her brother and then to just leave it empty is mean.
I guess she says it will be a shared space, but the whole house is a shared space. A 9 year old girl and a 4 year old boy (or a 15 year old girl and a 10 year old boy if you want to extrapolate out) aren’t going to play in a playroom together.

[Anonymous]

NP. Our family with four kids moved into a bigger home when I was 12. Initially, I shared a room with my brother so my older sisters could get their own rooms. There was an outside room with its own entrance and bathroom by the garage but my parents didn't want my sister out there. However, when she entered high school, it made sense for her to have more independence and she earned my parents' trust by not abusing it. I would recommend you reserve the larger room for when each child is in high school. It could be an office/guest room in the meantime. That would be fair to both kids as they would have the same number of years in the room and the maturity hopefully to have access to an exterior door.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't even get it. You have a pretty princess room and you won't give it to a 9 year old girl, literally the one demographic that would appreciate it?

Because it doesn’t suit the needs of the entire family.

How? Literally no one else in that family wants the room. OP doesn’t even know what she will do with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't even get it. You have a pretty princess room and you won't give it to a 9 year old girl, literally the one demographic that would appreciate it?

Because it doesn’t suit the needs of the entire family.

It does suit the needs of the entire family. The mother is being petty. When we were house hunting with 2 kids, I saw several houses where one child’s bedroom was twice the size of the other. I passed on those houses because there would be no way to make it fair. I assume OP liked other aspects of the house enough to purchase it. She made her bed, now lie in it.

Right?
This is like making your daughter’s favorite dessert and then telling her that she can’t have any if her brother doesn’t like it.

If it’s really that big of a deal that the kids have equal portions of everything, then don’t make that dessert.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't even get it. You have a pretty princess room and you won't give it to a 9 year old girl, literally the one demographic that would appreciate it?

Because it doesn’t suit the needs of the entire family.

It does suit the needs of the entire family. The mother is being petty. When we were house hunting with 2 kids, I saw several houses where one child’s bedroom was twice the size of the other. I passed on those houses because there would be no way to make it fair. I assume OP liked other aspects of the house enough to purchase it. She made her bed, now lie in it.

Literally amirite?

[Anonymous]

Mommy dearest is nutso

[Anonymous]

You are being ridiculous, OP.

I would resent you forever if you pulled this stunt. Give the girl her dream room. The 4 year old won't care.

[Anonymous]

You can’t make everything fair, OP. What happens if one of your kids gets into a time or money intensive extracurricular? Or one of them gets into an expensive elite college? Or one of them has a learning disability or develops an illness and needs additional parental support and financial support?

I was into crew in high school and ended up going to a state school on an athletic scholarship. My younger sister got into an Ivy League school, and my mom seriously considered not sending her because it wouldn’t be “fair” to pay for her college and not mine. It was crazy. I would have felt terrible if she had actually gone through with it. I think my grandmother pretty openly preferred my aunts to my mom, and my mom had a chip on her shoulder about that. But I never felt that my parents preferred my sister, even if she got “more” because it simply wasn’t true.

As long as your kids both know that you love them and are trying to do right by them, you don’t have to make everything fair and equal.