The Child's Room

Every mother tries to give her children a room of their own, which she adorns in all sorts of ways. But how many of these mothers, one wonders, draw up a plan to follow in arranging the room? Most likely very few indeed. For most children's rooms are usually furnished with whatever has accumulated in the house from the other rooms.

The truth is that furnishing a child's room is quite an easy matter, if certain established requirements concerning the child's health and his state of mind are observed in arranging it.

Here are five requirements the mother should observe before she begins furnishing her child's room, so that her effort may yield the greatest benefit.

1 — Choosing the furniture: In choosing the furniture the mother should take into account the child's size and build, and the tables, chairs, and the like that are in the room. The child who lives in a room fitted out for grown-ups feels just as you would feel if you were put in a room fitted out for a great giant. If you wish to use the pieces that have piled up in your house from the other rooms, out of regard for the heavy expenses this age demands of you, there is no harm in that — provided you ask a carpenter to cut down the legs of the chairs or tables and the like, so that their size suits the child; then he feels that this is his own room, and there awakens in his little soul a love of keeping it tidy and keeping it clean.

2 — Cleanliness and order: The mother must settle how to get the child to keep the room clean and orderly, and she often fails at it — and she herself is to blame, for the child's belongings and toys often outrun the cupboards and boxes in the room. To avoid this, commission any carpenter you know to fit some low shelves in the room, on which the child can put his toys when he has finished with them, instead of their being scattered over the floor. And there is no doubt that a small wardrobe for clothes in the room, with a box or two for odds and ends, does much for the look of the room and makes it easier to keep in order.

It is advisable that the child's rug be washable, so that it can be thoroughly cleaned whenever need be. The floor, too, should be wiped every day.

3 — Light and air: Fresh air and light are considerations whose necessity we never doubt, and yet the mother often neglects this side of the child's room for the sake of beautifying it: she hangs drapes over the windows and doors and smothers the air and light in the room. To avoid this, see to it that drapes and curtains are reduced as far as possible. It is advisable, too, to use thin, soft fabrics for them, of the washable kind. For the rooms of older children, use the strong national fabrics, such as Aleppo weave, for instance, or the cottons of Damascus and other gay, attractive cloths. From these fabrics you can also make handsome covers for the bedding.

4 — Space for play: One of the familiar problems in most houses is finding a wide space to set aside for the child's play; most often the child's bedroom is his playroom as well. How, then, can you secure enough space in the room when the bed and bedding take up the greater part of it? The best solution to this problem is the hanging beds, or what they call in English the "Bunck bed." These are beds used on steamships, consisting of a bed built in two tiers: one on the floor and another above it, reached by a small ladder. Any ordinary carpenter can make such a bed in any home. The lower bed rests on four wooden posts which rise from the floor to a height of a meter or a meter and a half above the first bed, and on top of these four posts the second bed is set. Children are usually enchanted with these beds, and bedtime ceases to be one of their hated hours. If the inevitable happens and they quarrel over the upper bed, it is easy for you to set a weekly turn by which each of the two children sleeps in the bed he wants. And as goes without saying, the upper bed must have a rail to keep the child from rolling off its sides.

If you have three children, you can order a very low bed made, which you slide under the lower bed by day. And if the idea of hanging beds does not appeal to you, there is another way of fitting in three or four children: beds made in graduated sizes, one placed under the other, as is sometimes done with cigarette tables. In this way the room gains a fair space to be set aside for play.

5 — Arranging the room: The first thing worth doing to beautify the room is to use bright, gay colors for the wood of the furniture, instead of that brown customarily used for the other rooms. Besides the cheer they kindle in the child's heart, these colors are usually washable and easy to clean. Bright, happy colors must be used, too, for the bedcovers and the seats. And do not neglect the effect that colors and patterns leave on the child's soul, for many of them inflame his senses and plant fear in him. Here is a curious incident that happened to me with my own children. I once put the two of them in a room whose wallpaper was not quite to my liking — red and green ran riot over it in great veins. Within a week the two children began having troubled dreams and screaming in their sleep that a big spider was falling on them in bed. I wondered greatly at the cause of these dreams; I cut out their supper and took to reading them stories they loved before bedtime. I did not understand the cause until a day came when one of them was sleeping in the afternoon and began to scream in terror. I ran to him and found him pointing at the great red and green veins on the ceiling and calling them the hateful spider. The next day I changed the wallpaper, replacing it with a lovely quiet color, and so put an end to those troubled dreams.

We know from our own experience how colors affect us. Blue and green are cheerful colors. Red is the color of agitation. Brown and black are unattractive colors. It is best, then, to use quiet colors in the child's room — colors that are quiet but attractive as well. And there is no harm in bringing in strong colors among the soft ones, so that the whole is attractive.

If you use pictures on the walls of the room, choose them with care, for it is they that will shape the growth of his taste; it is advisable, too, to change them from time to time, lest his eye grow so used to them that he no longer sees them. And see that they are hung at the level of the child's eye, for it is he who must see them.

As for the paint on the walls, if it can be of a kind that can be washed and cleaned, so much the better, and let the color go well with the colors of the furnishings. Thus your child's room will be not merely a room for sleeping, but a place where his little soul is cultivated and his taste refined.