Creating a Bedroom for Moose (Our Adopted Son)

Something I have always looked forward to was decorating our child's bedroom. Throughout the process I often asked "When do we buy a bed?" or "When can I paint his room?"

The answer to the first of those questions is not yet...we didn't know what age of the child we were looking for, in fact, to begin with, we were looking for a baby until we slowly increased our age range up to four years old. Moose actually turns five next month. Back when I started asking this question I would probably have bought a cot, in actual fact we needed a toddler bed!

The second question - we were always advised to keep the bedroom calm, plain white walls, nothing much going on. The advice I have read and heard often is don't make it the perfect room. Adopted children sometimes feel like they are on holiday, and it makes it harder to settle. I did listen to this advice...ish!

Not long after we moved in, we had painters in, and they stripped the old paint and sticker decals (I am not a fan of an inspirational quote!) off the walls, and we chose a pale grey-blue to cover the walls. The room then sat vacant for over a year. We knew what it would become one day, but after spending months and months of trying not to get hopes up it became a junk room where we dried laundry and stored excess crap!

Then we found Moose. Moose had a really small bedroom at his foster carers, and he settled much better there than in his previous bigger room. In fact, social workers strongly suggested that we let him sleep in our back bedroom, which is our guest room...the freshly decorated guest room! But we knew we wanted Moose in his room, we had always planned it that way, we had fitted a new window, and he can access our room at night if he needs us. But how do we make this 'work for the child'?

What we found is some things stick with a looked-after child. He has slept better in one house in a small room, so that is the only way he can settle. If he didn't eat carrots once, would we never try again? Even though he is a year older, more settled and a transformed child? So we aimed for a compromise.

Moose has some sensory needs, and had a tiny sensory cupboard at his foster carer's home - so I divided the room. We hung IKEA grey floor-to-ceiling curtains on a curtain wire from the chimney breast to the opposite wall. This instantly made the room feel softer, cosier and smaller. With the soft grey walls and curtains, we were sure that Moose would find this space suitable. What didn't help when social workers looked around is that we have high-ish ceilings and the picture rail extends that illusion.

We transformed a smaller third of the room into a sensory room - which I will talk about in a future blog.

We went for IKEA furniture as it has simple, clean lines and is practical. The bed is an extendable toddler bed, with an IKEA Mattress. Pete, my husband, used to work in a bed shop, so he is picky about mattresses, so we did go for the most expensive one on sale, but since we got a heavily discounted expensive mattress for ourselves, I will never look back! Sleep is so important, right?!

We went for a children's wardrobe and drawer combination, with soft closers and rounded handles and corners for safety. The soft grey echoes the rest of the room. We added a couple of classic Kallax units, and we have secured these all to the wall. It is quite incredible how many clothes a four-year-old acquires and requires!

Bedding we got from B&M, to be honest, I wish we had gone for a better quality, and I think we will change this out quite quickly.

We have a tapestry on the wall which is a creation of Hello Big Hug (insta), Pete bought this a couple of years back knowing it would go on our son's bedroom wall - in all honesty, I always worried that the design would be too much, but Moose has never complained! We have tried to keep decor to a minimum to save overwhelming him, but we also added a painting by my mum of a penguin, which Moose has aptly named "Mr Penguin".

Beside the bed we have a classic IKEA cloud light, every child needs one right? Then above his bed is a Rainbow his foster carers gave him. We talk about them often and he knows how much they love him, and how much they still think of him. I think of the rainbow as them looking over him, knowing what a huge part they have played in his life.

We also found some really cute soft blue dinosaur curtains we got in a Dunelm sale, I LOVE a dinosaur and the pattern is not too overbearing. If it was the right thing I would have a dinosaur mural on the wall! But I know that would be too much...I can sometimes show restraint.

Lastly, we have two photo frames on the wall. I went back and forth for weeks - is it the right thing, is it too much distraction, is it forcing his new family upon him? One photo is Moose playing with bubbles, his favourite thing. The other is a photo of the three of us from the first time he visited his new house.

He looks at these photos every night as he gets tucked into bed and says "Daddy Ross, Daddy Peter and Moose. Moose's forever family". It nearly makes me cry and I have heard it so many times! He has used these photos to process what is going on with the changes in his life, as he moved from his foster home to his forever home. We have similar ones around the house. He loves pictures, he loves taking pictures and frequently asks us to take pictures on our phones.

I am so glad we put these up. They remind him of his forever family, and from time to time you can catch him just staring up at them.

So that is how we created our child's 'plain' bedroom, to try and reduce visual overloading for him, keeping it a calm environment and also trying not to make it too much like a show home. I have been banned from strategically placing cute toys in the wicker baskets!