For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 18, 2020

Yes, Elizabeth. While some parents put the newborn in their own room, your parents have decided to get some sleep at night.

YOU HAVE TO SHARE WITH THE BABY.

I think Stephanie felt the same way when Michelle moved into her room while DJ got her own room. (Been a bit of a while since I saw “Full House”, the prequel to “Fuller House.”)

Why didn’t Elle talk to Elizabeth about the room arrangement before she put the crib in her room?

Totally unfair to put a newborn in with another child. She needs her sleep.

Usually it is the mothers who notice those things. I’m impressed, John. Anyway, Elly is being selfish here, putting the newborn in with a sibling. The baby should be in the bedroom with the parents until she is old enough to sleep outside of a crib – around 3-4 years old. Elly shouldn’t expect a 10 year old to wake up at all hours of the night, maybe change diapers and give her milk or stand over the crib to comfort the baby. That’s a mother’s job. It would be ok if it was during the day when she is wide awake and active but overnight? No. Put that crib in YOUR room, Elly. John can handle waking up overnights and share the duties. Better John than Liz.

~ Gretchen’s Mom for the defense, in the court of comics opinions, came to about 13 hours ago

@HarryCK

“I try to overlook things like that. It could have been an honest mistake or perhaps English isn’t their native language,”

I put the wink and smile ;) to signify finding what I considered a goof but yet not to be heavy handed over it. I did see comedy in the post that brought my response, as it was.

Look at it this way, Mom is preparing you for the day when you have children.

I know this choice is made for dramatic reasons, but it does seem peculiar. I’ve heard of the middle child sharing a room with the younger sibling, but usually once they’re at least a few months old?

The crib is in Aprils room, but the cradle may be in the parents room. Ever thought of that? But maybe they don’t have a cradle, I didn’t and my kids grew up to be great parents.

Say goodbye to sleeping, Liz. Oh, and you’re still responsible for improving your grade and not moping around the house.

She is the baby of the family, but when the new baby comes that is over. She feels she will not be loved anymore. This is very hard on children the parents must always let them know they will always be their baby.

Poor Elizabeth.

I thought this was a comic strip not a child raising book.

After dragging it out of the attic, they had to store the crib somewhere! I’m sure the cradle is in Mom & Dad’s room.

Not every home is big enough to accommodate separate rooms for the kids.

I believe April will have her own bedroom but it doesn’t mean that the other two won’t have to do some shifting. If Elizabeth is moving into a new room, it’s a good idea to make the move several months before the baby comes. Even if it’s a nicer room, she’s not going to want to give up her old one. We went through the process several times.

Maybe Elly’s size right now prevents the parents from having the crib in their room…

Funny, I cannot for the life of me remember where they put my sister’s crib when she was born. Probably in my parents room, then in mine (I was 5 then). I do know before my brother was born that my dad build another bedroom in the basement. We rotated bedrooms a lot at that point in time, sometimes I shared with my sister, she’d share with our brother, etc. I think when I hit that moody teen phase that I got the downstairs bedroom so I could do my own sulky thing.. LOL!

If I were Lizzie, the first time the baby cried, I would get up, knock on the parents’ bedroom door, and then go sleep on the sofa. I never saw a family with a cradle. The baby slept in the crib. During the day, the baby laid in a bassinet, and mom wheeled the baby with her from room to room.

When I was 3 1/2 the first of my brothers was born. Up to that point it had just been me and my much older sister. His crib was put in with me, since my bedroom was larger (at least that’s what I was told). I don’t recall if the crib started in my parents’ bedroom or not, but he was still an infant when it moved into my room. I certainly wasn’t expected to take care of him. My parents (mostly mom) would come in when he squawked. I was a pretty heavy sleeper, so I likely slept through everything. It wasn’t until my sister headed off to college that my brother moved into my sister’s room, and when our baby brother came along, his crib went in with the older brother (though the logic escapes me, since I still had the bigger bedroom). Eventually we moved into a bigger house.

There is nothing wrong with a crib being in an older child’s room, especially once the baby can move its head. Being with the parents is mostly for the sake of convenience.

In some places everybody sleeps in one big sleeping room. In other places, all of the kids are in one room and the parents are in another. Some families do it the Brady Bunch way. There really is no one right way when it comes to sleeping arrangements, other than a baby shouldn’t sleep in the parent’s bed as that’s dangerous for the baby.

Decent parents would have discussed that decision with Elizabeth first. Besides, why not put the baby in Mike’s room? (Assuming his room is bigger that makes more sense – or if that’s true then make him take the smaller bedroom since Liz will have to share.)

Sharing a bedroom is the current topic in our family. My stepson, his wife, and two children lived downstairs from us for the past 5 years. They moved out just before Christmas because it had reached the point where it was impractical and no longer feasible for my grandaughter to share a bedroom with her younger brother. Even though there was a room divider to give them some privacy, my granddaughter who is going on 12, needs a room of her own, as does her brother who will be 9 this year.

They moved into a new 3 bdrm. house with enough space and privacy for everyone.

Although we miss them, it was a move that we encouraged and knew had to be done.

We’re converting the downstairs into a professional office and business space for my wife, as I write.

Once upon a time, people slept wherever. Five to a bed, if they had a bed, on the floor, in the barn, in the front room near the fireplace, near the kitchen stove. Only princesses in fairy tales had “their own” rooms, and even then they had servants sleeping near them, often on the floor. I think the “own room” idea came as a backlash to the 50’s, when kiddos were crammed wherever. Imagine this: kiddos before the 70’s were expected to share rooms and help with chores. Shocking!

I’d like opinions on brothers and sisters sharing a room together. On young Sheldon, 12 year old brother and sister share a bedroom. When is it considered “too old” from them to be doing this?

Al of that should be in the parents room.

Until a baby is at least two, they should be sleeping with the parents or in a room of it’s own close to the parents. My Mom did it with me and I’m pretty sure my Dad did it with my younger sister.

I don’t think anybody said exactly this above, though some did sort of mention it. I’d like to point out that the FURNITURE for a baby is in Liz’s room. No BABY is there yet, nor do we have any reason to assume that one will be in the future. My opinion is that it’s jumping to a conclusion to assume that Liz will have to be sharing with or caring for the baby just because a crib is in her room! It would, of course, be nice if Elly or John had told her they were putting the crib there, but then it wouldn’t be as funny a comic. But I will admit that I don’t consider this a big deal, as I am the oldest of 9 kids, and kids’ furniture and kids, for that matter, were all over the place in every room of the house. :-D But my mother took care of the babies, with some help from those of us who were older, and nobody ever shared a room with a child that wasn’t at least 2 or 3 years old.

Well, everyone needs space for him/her.