The Rumpus Room
Gone are the days of kids hanging out in the dark paneled basement. More and more parents are turning to designers to create a space for their children that is friendly, inviting, and most of all will keep their children at home. Parents are turningto designers to help them create these rooms, or in some cases elaborate indoor-outdoor cabanas.
I saw evidence of this when we were looking at new construction. Every single house had a second dedicated family room for the kids and a media room especially for watching movies.
In a recent article in the NYTimes,
Julia Buckingham Edelmann, a Chicago interior designer, said that over the last few years she has seen a large increase in clients who want to decorate and design spaces for their teenage children, and a concurrent decline in interest in the multipurpose great room. “There are dedicated spaces for everything” these days, she said — the home gym, the home spa — “so it makes sense that there is the teen space.”
I think that the point is aptly made that what passes for “play” these days for kids is really structured activities that look a lot like work. And so during their down time, kids, just like their parents, want to hang at home with their friends. Gas prices and safety issues have effectively cut out the drive around in the car all night looking for friends. Not to mention that through the advent of cell phones and texting, kids are constantly connected to their peers anyway. They don’t have as much of a burning desire to see them face to face.
The whole movement makes sense to me. We all want our teenagers to bring their friends to our house so we can get to know them. We all feel that we will supervise better than the other parent. Mostly, we don’t want to have to drive them all over Hell’s Half Acre. I want one of those rooms with the pool table, the 100 inch television, the XBox and whatever else in my house. Maybe once my kids go to bed for the night I could sneak in there and play.
