One Room Challenge: Week 2 | Creating Space for Adventure in a Kid’s Room
When we were dating, Denis told me about an extra room his parents had given him in his childhood home that had a folding mat in it and he could just bounce around in there. This story always seemed ludicrous and a bit extravagant to me. Why on earth would anyone need or want that?
On a related note, let me tell you about some of Benji’s more recent hobbies:
Running back and forth across our living room—basically doing sprints over and over for 15-20 minutes or so at a time.
Parcouring around our living room.
Standing on the arm of our couch and free falling onto the cushions.
Insisting on using the big kid jungle gyms for 6-12 year-olds at parks.
(Take a look at the video on Instagram that chronicles some of his exploits.)
This is all to say that I’ve learned that Benji feels best when he is in motion (his safe space is his rocking horse).
And I now understand why Denis’s parents felt the need to give him a room to throw himself around in. (At this point, you may be thinking that Denis has ADHD and can’t sit still. Well, he does have a little trouble sitting still but as someone who has ADHD, I can tell you Denis does NOT have it.)
As much as his stunts often terrify me, I’m trying to lean into Benji’s physicality. This summer we signed him up for weekly tumbling classes and this Saturday he’s going to his first soccer class. (Did I mention his incredible balance and spatial awareness? Seriously, he’s more likely to bump into something when I’m carrying him than when he’s walking around on his own.)
Since we don’t have a large backyard or even a driveway, we can’t give him a big jungle gym or a bunch of space to ride scooters or bikes. We also don’t have a spare room we can make into a playroom (or a bouncing room like Denis had).
Are you still with me?
Or did you skip all that exposition and scroll down here to the big reveal? That’s okay, I forgive you.
My redesign of Benji’s room for the One Room Challenge is going to include (pause for dramatic effect) a Swedish climbing wall!
Have I gone completely insane? Am I the best mom ever? Or is this addition to Benji’s room the only reasonable parenting move given his recent hobbies?
Honestly, this was the whole reason I started seriously thinking about an overhaul of Benji’s room. Okay, to be fair, I’d already done a few redesigns of Benji’s room on my computer, but this is what made me think seriously about tackling it.
We needed something for his room that wouldn’t take up valuable floor space. If we had the room, I’d do something like one of these Pikler triangles, but we just don’t have the square footage for that.
I’d also really love to get him a sensory swing, but I read that you need 4-6 ft of clearance on all sides, and his room doesn’t have that when there’s furniture in there. Maybe when he’s a little older we can convince him not to swing directly into surrounding furniture or walls, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
I told Denis we needed to do something to let him explore his boundaries and get out his energy, so it was either this climbing wall or this small climbing structure in our backyard, which Benji would quickly outgrow. Denis was fully on board, but he keeps being surprised that I’m on board. And when I’m looking for reassurance about whether or not this will work in the room and I ask if this is the right decision, he hears a totally different context and responds with “It’ll be fine so long as he doesn’t break his neck.” Very helpful.
The climbing wall arrives this week but it’s going to take a little while to install it. I’m probably going to reinforce its attachment to our wall with an extra board of plywood between the ladder and the wall. But I have to figure out how to get said plywood from Home Depot to our house with only our sedan to help us.
Stayed tuned to find out how it all goes and keep coming back every Thursday for more One Room Challenge updates!
Until next week, here’s a refresher on what the plan for the room is, this time including the Swedish climbing wall. For sources and links, see last week’s post.
