He Says She Says 29/04/10

This week: Will your children’s bedroom poster plans drive you right up the wall?

He says:

If I was to ask that you think back to your childhood and your bedroom in your family home, the chances are you can remember vividly the layout of your room and all those posters you had on the wall.

I’ll never forget the ones that graced mine. There were my favourite cars and bikes of the era that I would finally go to sleep dreaming about. For many the chart topping artist or group was the chosen poster or a giant Disney character looking down at you.

I have always encouraged my kids to put posters on their bedroom wall, not to get out of having to decorate the room but to make it their room and to turn our house into their home.

There seem to be a growing number of parents now that insist their homes look like show houses and not a family home.

They decide they want their kids’ rooms to look how they would want it.

Looking through the eyes of a grown up we lose what’s important to kids. As they get older they may opt for table lamps, laminate flooring and a tasteful rug but while young they rather a poster of Dr Who or an almost life-sized Justin Timberlake.

Why, like my co-host, would you deny them this essential part of growing up because you are precious about an £8 roll of wallpaper, believing a poster looks tacky?

Be honest, how many people go into your kid’s room anyway?

Most adults remember their posters and it brings back great memories.

If you didn’t have them or weren’t allowed them don’t deny your young people their chance to be able to reflect on great and sometimes embarrassing posters they had as a kid.

She says:

My daughter Lily is getting to an age where I think she will start to get more interested in pop groups and celebrities.

So inevitably she may at some time want to put some posters up on her bedroom wall which I am not at all happy about.

I don’t remember being able to put them up on my bedroom wall when I was a kids because of the wallpaper and the effect that blu-tac had on it.

My mum didn’t like that at all.

And I don’t like it either.

I think that posters on a bedroom wall are the height of tackiness and make a room look really scruffy.

I don’t mind proper pictures or posters but the last thing that I want to see is a load of pages ripped out of magazines with tatty edges and holes in the middle where the staples used to be.

I spent a lot of money decorating my daughter’s room in the colours that she wanted. I bought lovely wallpaper, paint and lots of gorgeous accessories for it so there is no way after all the time and effort I put in that it’s going to be covered up by a load of posters.

You never see one of those designers go into a house to do a makeover and when they have finished return to the room and put back all the kids’ horrible posters of their favourite football players and bands.

They wouldn’t do it because it would ruin the look that they have spent hours trying to achieve.

I don’t believe that she is missing out on anything by me not letting her have posters on the wall. It won’t affect her life, it won’t make her go off the rails and it certainly won’t make her life any different.

She’s not missing out; it’s just a bunch of posters!

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