Bedroom Talk

At what age would you let your child have a bedroom up/down stairs?

I'm looking at buying a house. We currently have no children, but surprises happen! Anyway, it's a perfect house for us, except it only has one bedroom on the main level, and two bedrooms upstairs. Which means my child would have to stay with us in our room until he/she was old enough to be trusted with the stairs. There's no bathroom upstairs either (and no room to add one!) so I'm just worried that my kid will wake up in the middle of the night, still be groggy and uncoordinated and fall down the stairs trying to get to me or the bathroom. I'd plan on our child being with us until they were around 1 anyway, but it would be nice to have some privacy with my husband again eventually, unless I just set them up a little space in the living room or something with their bed, and we'd retreat to our bedroom for the night. What's your ideas? I've never been around kids my whole life, so I don't know when I'd trust them to be alone. There's other risks like if there was a fire? I suppose another solution would be to block off the stairs really well and us temporarily stay in the other bedroom so he/she could come and get us if they need to potty or have a bad dream. While it would be nice to live in a huge mansion with bathrooms for every room, I have to be realistic and buy what we can afford as a family, and this is the BEST house we can get in our price range, and it has everything else we're looking for. I don't think we'll come across a better house for the price, so not buying it is out of the question. The reason we can't afford anything better is because we've decided I will stay home will we have children and not work, so we want a mortgage payment that will allow us to do that. I think spending time will my kids will be more important than them having their own bathroom upstairs. Sorry, when* not will Actually, a one level home would not be cheaper than this house. It's already gone through foreclosure and we are getting it at a great price (which is the only reason we can afford it). We can't even afford a two bedroom 1 bath on the regular housing market here. The real estate is expensive, and wages are low. It's horrible. We can only afford $700 a month tops, and the average house is 225,000 here. You can't get anything decent under 120,000 here, (even in the bad parts of town) and that would be around $1,000 a month) so we're lucky to get this one. It would be more realistic to spend a few thousand building another room onto the first level than to look at buying a different house. ...........This is going into too much detail. I just wanted an age number. lol

Public Comments

1. i think after the age of 5 a child should be ok to live upstairs. but i would suggest turning th bottom floor room into a guest room and making your room closer to your future child.
2. You could use the downstairs bedroom as an office and the two upstairs could be yours and the baby's.
3. I think I would block the stairs and the door to their room and get a moniter so that if they get up in the night you hear them. I all ways put my kids in thier rooms early on so that they don't get to use to sleeping in my bed or in my room. This way they don't have trouble trying to make the change later. I don't think a year is to early if you do them few things. As long as their room is the one upstairs. I have a problem with my childs room being downstairs and mine being up stairs at any age. And moving into the other bedroom for a while isn't a bad idea either if you just have the one baby.
4. Honestly I wouldnt buy that house. Just the upstairs not having a bathroom or room for addition would prove very frustrating later. EDIT** Well a "huge mansion" is just a silly statement to make..most homes have 2 bathrooms and are far from being mansions. Do whatever you want I was just offering realistic advise.
5. Our house has the master bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms/one bathroom upstairs. We bought the house when our daughter was 5. She is a very sound sleeper and I was afraid she would wake up in the middle of the night and fall down the stairs looking for us. We would alternate sleeping with her. I know bad idea but it made us feel better. Now she is turning 9 and I don't worry about it any more. She is used to the stairs and manages to make her way down in the middle of the night if she has a bad dream. These kinds of floor plans are not good for families with younger children. We are trying to have more children. I would like our next house to have all the bedrooms on the same floor. Families with older children (teenagers) this floor plan makes much more sense, so kids and parents can have their own privacy. If you really want that house you can make things work, people do every day. If you have doubts then keep looking. Good Luck!
6. I've been through it and you need to see what the risks are and then take precautions against them. We had a one level house that was so long that my daughter's room was 70 feet away. I hated having her so far, I was afraid of fire and that I wouldn't hear a break-in. Now, (different house) we are downstairs and all the kids are upstairs. It took some getting used to and I sometimes have my episodes of getting up to check on everything. Having a baby on a separate floor can be a lot of excersize up and down the stairs. If it is too much running, move the baby after she gets a more regular and longer sleep schedule. (3-6 months old, not long) A baby monitor comes in loud and clear and you'll tune in to it easily. I still use the monitor and my youngest is 3. We used to have a gate installed at the bedroom door. We didn't do it at the top of the stairs because our bathroom is up there and wanted to keep her out of there unsupervised as well. She's had a lot of practise on the stairs and I don't worry about her on the stairs much worse than I worry about my 13 year old on the stairs (heck, I worry about my mom and co-workers on the stairs too!) but the kid really does them well. When we lived in the long house, I had a battery operated window alarm that would've sounded if anybody tampered wth the window. In both houses we had the baby monitor, and I alway kept my batteries in the smoke detectors fresh. Now that we are on two levels, I have battery smoke detectors that will send the signal for ALL the detectors to ring if one of them goes off. Thankfully, the alarms have all been false (it's my dinner bell...supper is definitely cooked!) These detectors are not expensive and available at Home Depot, Lowe's and I'm sure other places too. I also have a fire extinguisher on both floors (not expensive) Try to remember that the first house doesn't have to be THE house. A house may be the right financial move to make now to ensure your families future financial security later or that your get that perfect home later. You don't want to "save" yourself out of a home. (in the time it takes you to save up for the perfect house, the market could have gone up enough that you're still now looking at the same houses with 25K in the bank) You can't think of every future event when buying your first home. Look at your finances and what you plan on doing for now, the rest worry about later. Certain things you can make a deal on when you make the offer...like "I'll pay 250K for the house, if you get a fire escape installed from that window". Then you know if you make it upstairs, you'll still be able to carry the baby out. Sorry for the long answer...good luck house hunting and to you and your future family!
7. I've been sleeping in my own upstairs room since I was two. The bathroom was near my room, but my parents room was right next to the stairs. Rather than keeping me with them, they put a gate across the stairs at the top and at the bottom, so we wouldn't have a space to fall through. This isn't really related but, I assume you didn't meant when you could trust your child with the stairs, but rather until your child would be safe, right? I mean it isn't really a matter of trust, just safety.
8. it is great you want to stay home with the kids. But I don't know how you will go with no bathroom upstairs. For them to always have to come downstairs in the middle of the night may not be a good thing as they will wake up too much and will have trouble getting back to sleep. Is a one story possible? It will be cheaper and the bathroom will be assessible to all and you will have no problems with not hearing the kids