Matt Heath: Why sharing a room with your kids isn't a bad idea

I've been sleeping on the floor of my son's bedroom. He hates it. I love it. Photo / 123RF

OPINION:

Is the key to a good night's sleep sharing a room with your kids? Gib shortages, broken pipes and staffing issues have put the rebuilding of our downstairs behind schedule. With the master and spare room out of action, we've billeted family members around the house. I've been sleeping on the floor of my son's bedroom. He hates it. I love it. Why? My theory is that I'm resting easy because I am there ready to defend my child if a ninja assassin breaks in and attacks. Even in slumber, I feel the natural ease of a protective parent doing his job. My son, on the other hand, isn't sleeping at all due to my horrific snoring.

Obviously, sharing a room isn't uncommon in New Zealand. Most people hit the hay with a significant other. It's a healthy lifestyle choice in some ways but it doesn't create the primal protective buzz bunking with a kid does. That's because fellow adults can get themselves out of the house in an emergency. It's the little ones down the hall you unconsciously stress over. Sleeping on the ground, ready to fight for your dependants is powerful. Whatever benefits you get from sharing a room with an adult are wiped out by her duvet hogging, reading with the light on and watching Netflix on her laptop with the sound up.

Digs in South Africa's Border Cave archaeological site suggest family and tribal groups have been communally sleeping for more than 200,000 years, according to Professor Lyn Wadley, of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

"There is evidence that multiple people slept on grass surfaces at the back of these caves. They worked there too. We know this because debris from stone tool manufacture is mixed with the grass remains of the bedding".

It looks like, in our natural state, we not only snoozed with each other, we worked all day in bed with them too. Now we sleep behind multiple closed doors and work miles away. It might be leading to parental anxiety. You can't protect your kid from wolves and volcanoes when you're in the middle of town and they're at school in the burbs.

In his book "What We Did in Bed", Brian Fagan, professor emeritus in anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, states: "For most of human history, people thought nothing of crowding family members or friends into the same bed. Sleeping was a communal activity for millennia. In the days before central heating and alarm systems, bedmates were a necessity. Entire families would pack together to sleep (plus guests) and even strangers."

We spent hundreds of thousands of years sleeping communally. Maybe that's why it feels so natural to be sleeping on my son's floor, amongst the Lego, Marvel figurines and PlayStation discs out of their covers.

It's been less than two centuries since everyday people got their own bedrooms. In the industrial revolution housing, Victorian prudishness and poor medical advice were the main drivers of this change. According to Rachel Long on BBC's "Ode To The Bed", "Victorian health experts demanded children sleep away from their parents to prevent the adults sucking out the children's youthful life force during the night."

Natural or not, a return to group sleep might be a struggle for some. Bedroom separation has likely made us nocturnally intolerant. As boarding school students know, noisy things happen in the dark. Some people release gases; others sleep-talk, some suffer screaming night terrors. You don't know how well you'll go in a large group until you try. Recently I bunked with 40 others at the Pinnacles Hutt in Coromandel Forest Park. I had a great kip. In the morning, I chatted to a guy one bunk across. He hadn't slept at all. Someone near him had been snoring loudly all night. I'd heard nothing.

For more than 8000 generations humans slept on grass floors with friends, family and random travellers. We've had fewer than 10 on our own. Private spaces, closed doors and separate sleeping arrangements are new to our species. Maybe we're missing out on the benefits of primal communal bedtimes. I suggest recreating the magic by throwing a family sleepover in the lounge tonight. You might like it.

My builders have informed me that our downstairs renovation will be finished in the next two weeks. I'm going to tell them not to hurry.