A few months ago my next door neighbors built a clubhouse, and it was hardly completed before ds8 began regularly disappearing into their yard. Usually when he would go to their house, it would be to play with their children, but when I would search for him, each time I would find him sitting or laying inside their clubhouse, happy to be in this private space on his own or with ds4.

It was clear to me that he really wanted some space of his own. Don’t we all sometimes want that freedom of just being, without oversight or needing to be accountable for our time?

I had been thinking for a while of building a clubhouse for ds8 and ds4, but seeing this galvanized me to take action.

A business in the industrial zone of a neighboring city advertised that they were giving away large wood crates. They listed their address and asked not to be called, to just come. So one night when my husband was on his way home from Jerusalem with ds22, I asked them to stop before coming home and see if any of the crates were still left. There were three left, so they chose the one that looked best. Using the rachet straps stored in the car, together the two of them got in on top of the car and fastened down – it was an unwieldy load!

Several times I had asked a couple of our teens to build some kind of clubhouse using some of the scrap wood left from their projects, but they weren’t very interested. I didn’t see any reason to insist on it, and it didn’t happen. But once I had this basic crate to work with, it was much easier to get them involved.

I asked ds13 to cut a door and window into it. The wood isn’t strong at all – it’s a basic cheap packing box that isn’t intended to hold up to long term use – so he reinforced both the door and window. After that, he put a waterproof roof on it, using material from a cage we were given but hadn’t ended up using.

Dd15 painted it blue, using leftover paint, and then ds12 painted the trim white – his idea, not mine. It made it look much nicer. Then one of the boys cut some artificial grass to fit on the floor, and voila, a clubhouse!

Ds8 and ds4 were delighted when they came outside and saw this mini house, all for them to play in. They’ve spent hours playing inside together; our granddaughters and visiting young children have also enjoyed it. And once we built this, they never went into the neighbor’s playhouse again.

(As an aside, this is not an uncommon dynamic when a child seems to be misbehaving – in this case leaving our home without permission and going into someone else’s yard without permission. If we can identify the need they are expressing and address that need, then the behavior will often fall away completely, since there’s no longer a need for the behavior.)

When I told a friend about this project, she sent me a paragraph from a Betsy-Tacy book, when the author of the fictional series writes about the young girls finding a piano box and making it into a play space. There’s something about having a space of one’s own that is significant for people of all ages. It might be going too far to call it a primal need, but it’s not too much to say that it’s deeply appreciated.

Ds12 has been asking for a space of his own for a while, and we haven’t yet figured out how to make that happen – he shares a room with ds4 and ds8. There’s a staircase on one side of our kitchen that leads to the second floor, and back in the fall when we were putting in the new kitchen, he asked me if he could put a narrow mattress in that space under the stairs and it would be his room. Yes, ala Harry Potter, but in this case he felt it would be very desirable. He wasn’t happy when I told him I planned to use that space for kitchen storage.

t’s a simple playhouse and due to the quality of the wood, I don’t know how it will hold up once the rainy season comes. But we literally spent no money and not more than a couple of hours putting this together, using recycled materials we had at home. As long as it lasts, I appreciate the enjoyment they’ve been having in this space of their own.

Avivah