Just my opinion again, of course, in the end you have to decide how you want to handle it...
Your children will practically shower every day, how often do you actually have overnight guests who will shower in the bathroom on the ground floor?
Your children will not tidy up the bathroom every day, won’t wipe down the shower every time, and might leave the sink dirty.
I wouldn’t want that in my guest toilet/bathroom (assuming they take over the downstairs bathroom, which I assume with 4 people who might want to get ready at the same time).
Guests usually have their change of clothes and toiletry bag with them when they go into your bathroom, so it doesn’t matter if they carry it up the stairs instead of across the hallway, but you actually want to offer your own children more than running half naked through the house every time they forgot their fresh underwear in their room.
And you’d then have a third toilet in the house, but I really wouldn’t find that dramatic, since the shower downstairs would be eliminated then.
So as I said, I grew up like this and so did my wife (i.e., WITHOUT a children’s bathroom) with more siblings each, and it always worked very well. I also don’t know that culture of locking doors. We are a family and if someone wants to go somewhere, you can knock in case of emergency if you don’t already know where the others are.
Of course, it might be a bit more comfortable if the children have their own bathroom. But at least WE just don’t consider it necessary.
We will take up the idea mentioned below and install connections where the storage room is, so in case it really annoys us later to not have a children’s bathroom, we could simply build one later. And a shower in the entrance area I find very important with children and dogs — you can just put someone under it before having to go through the whole house, if needed.
For whom should you do that — for the monsters from Minecraft?
Anyone who would hysterically react to naked parents/children/siblings can just knock beforehand. After all, you don’t watch Alfred Hitchcock right before every shower.
For pedagogical reasons, I would advise against that too. The children’s bathroom is a good learning station for personal responsibility. If mommy cleans it, the boy will still be living in the children’s room at 42.
You said it well, why should I constantly lock every door when I live with my own family, and they will notice anyway when they open the door and I shout, “I’M SITTING ON THE TOILET.”
But as I said, these are all personal decisions in the end. I’m still glad that you all have eagerly shared your ideas and made us think about it again.
To quote a father of three with a children’s bathroom: "If you like cleaning and have too much money left, build a children’s bathroom."
The day has 24 hours and in 2019 you can probably manage to coordinate who showers when.
Hehe, yes, I see it exactly that way, because no matter how you twist and turn it, if I build another bathroom, it will of course first be more expensive and second as already mentioned, who ends up cleaning it, especially during the time when the children aren’t using it and afterwards… the children are out of the house, and I just have a totally unnecessary bathroom (in my eyes).