Should I Let My Kids Decorate The House? What I Learned From One Jungle Mural
I rounded the corner from the entryway last month, arms crammed full of leaky grocery bags and a half-melted carton of chocolate ice cream my kids had begged for, and stopped dead. Above my new pale gray couch, the entire expanse of wall was covered in overlapping sheets of butcher paper, taped at the edges with so much masking tape it looked like a giant, lopsided collage. My 7-year-old Mia and 4-year-old Jax were perched on the couch arms, covered in neon green paint, grinning like they’d just pulled off the heist of the century. “We made a jungle for our family,” Mia said, leaning forward to point. “That big orange circle is your sunhat, and that brown blob is Dad’s beard.” Jax bounced up and down. “And that green spot is Muffin! Our dog is hiding in the trees!”
I’d just repainted that wall six months earlier, after the last time Muffin chewed through a baseboard and left drywall dust everywhere. My first thought was how much work it would be to scrape all that tape off, how I’d probably have to do a touch-up coat to cover the residue. I opened my mouth to tell them it was a great job, but we’d have to take it down and hang it in their rooms instead. That’s what I’d always done before: all art stays in the art nook, all decor gets approved by me, the common areas stay tidy and match the throw pillows I spent three weekends picking out.
I’d always judged other parents who let their kids take over shared space, if I’m honest. I saw a video once of a mom who let her 8-year-old paint the entire entryway blue with handprints, and I thought that was just a performative social media thing to do, something you’d regret when you went to sell the house. I grew up in a house where the living room was “company space” – we never even sat on the couch there, and my art got taped to the inside of my closet door, never where anyone but me could see it. I thought that was just how things worked.
But that day, Jax grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, and I saw they’d used the fancy sparkly glitter glue I’d hidden away for birthday cards to add stars to the top of the jungle. Their hands were still sticky, and Mia’s sneaker had left a tiny blue paint mark on the arm of the couch. The ice cream was definitely melting through the bag onto my foot. And I thought, so what? If I have to repaint a wall, it’s $30 for a can of paint. What’s the harm in letting them have this for a little while? I told them it was the best jungle I’d ever seen, and we left it up.
That’s when I started thinking about what it actually means when kids want to decorate the shared parts of your home. I follow an early childhood educator online, and she said once that little kids don’t just want their own room to decorate – they want to belong in the space that the whole family uses. Claiming space isn’t misbehavior, it’s them asking “do I matter here enough to leave my mark?” That hit me, because I could still remember how small I felt in our old formal living room growing up. So after the butcher paper jungle fell down on its own two weeks later, I made a few small, low-fuss changes that didn’t require redoing the whole house or spending much money.
First, I ordered a $12 roll of magnetic bulletin board material and cut it to fit a 4 by 2 foot section of the dining room wall – the one by the back door that’s behind the trash can, so no one really notices it anyway. That’s their permanent shared art wall. They can tape, pin, or stick whatever they want there, swap it out whenever they want, no asking permission required. Second, when I was at Target picking up paper towels a few weeks later, I brought the kids with me and told them they each could pick one throw pillow for the living room couch, with a $15 limit. Mia got a purple unicorn covered in sequins, Jax got a giant green T-Rex. They don’t match my beige linen couch at all, but they sit on those pillows every single night for story time. Third, I gave them the front door for all their school projects and holiday cutouts. I used to hang a nice neutral wreath there year round, now it’s half wreath, half whatever they’ve brought home that week. Last month it was covered in Valentine’s cards they made at preschool.
It’s not all perfect, obviously. Last week they taped a giant drawing of a robot to the kitchen window that blocked so much sunlight I couldn’t see to wash dishes. Sometimes they fight over who gets more space on the art wall, and I have to step in and split it down the middle with a piece of masking tape. Glue residue still pops up in random places, and I have to scrub it off with a magic eraser once a week. When my mom came to visit last month, she raised an eyebrow at the art wall and asked if I was going to take it down before the neighbors saw. I just shrugged and told her it’s part of the house now. Mia heard us, and immediately dragged my mom over to point out every drawing, chattering the whole time about which one was her favorite.
I still like a tidy house, most days. I still put the fancy napkins out when we have big dinner parties, and I straighten the couch pillows when I’m vacuuming. But I’ve stopped thinking that the common spaces of our home have to be perfect to be good. Yesterday, I walked down the hallway and saw that Jax had taped his lopsided handprint turkey from preschool right next to the thermostat. I’d just finished wiping down the wall after Muffin had a muddy accident, and I stood there for a minute with a wet sponge in my hand, debating whether to take it down. The turkey’s beak is crooked, and the glue is already starting to peel at the corners. I left it up. It’s still there. The house doesn’t look like the home decor catalogs I used to scroll through when I was pregnant, planning out every detail. It’s ours, all of ours – messy, lopsided, covered in glitter, and exactly where we’re supposed to be.
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