Up close: Why I shared a bed with my teenage son for two nights

You read that right. I, a father of two, spent two nights on the same narrow bed, in the same tiny room, using the same towel, same bathroom shoes and same shower with my Gen Z son. 

The room had no TV, no Wi-Fi, no radio — just a single old chair and a bed barely wide enough for one person. 

And yet, that was exactly the point. 

It all began when I signed up for a parent–child adventure organised by JH Outback Kenya at Dimesse Conference Centre in Karen, Nairobi. The organisers promised a three-day experience designed to strengthen bonds and give parents and their teenage sons and daughters a fresh perspective on their relationship. 

For Sh19,000, JH Outback Kenya offered parents three days of practical lessons on reconnecting with their teenage children. 

There was a hidden catch—during the two days and nights, parents and their children had to share everything, including a tiny room with a single bed (and thin mattress on it) and same daily routine. 

Regardless of whether you lived in Karen’s leafy suburbs, arrived in a noisy matatu from town, or walked from Lang’ata, you were getting the same experience. We were at least a hundred participants — mostly mothers with their daughters and a few brave fathers, many of whom looked lost on day one. 

When the organisers noticed the bewildered faces of parents accustomed to an invisible iron curtain between themselves and their teenagers back home, they politely reminded us that we were not attending the event as parents of the GenZs but as friends of the Gen Zs — and friends share everything. 

And so, a crowd of modern parents found themselves squeezed inside modest single rooms with their sons and daughters for two nights—perhaps the longest uninterrupted time many had spent with their teenagers since the diaper years. 

Few parents spoke openly about that first night. But let me say there were awkward moments. Like a father and son, exhausted after a long day of lessons about being better men, staring at one narrow bed and waiting to see who would blink first and offer to sleep on the floor. 

Awkward moments like a father debating whether to switch off the lights before changing, or whether wrapping a towel around his ageing waistline was enough—same for mothers with their daughters. 

Awkward moments like fathers, who last saw their sons naked as toddlers, now suddenly realising these “babies” had grown into stronger, taller, more muscular young men — men who could easily win a fistfight with them. 

For mothers, perhaps, the awkward realisation that the daughters they once dressed now stood beside them as full-grown women. 

And then there was the snoring, whose echoe would be the loudes? According to the facilitators, these awkward moments were necessary. They tore down walls we had built, consciously or not, between us and our Gen Z children. 

To understand our own sons and daughters, we sign up for being vulnerable like them. 

For first timers this was uncomfortable in many aspects. Perhaps the greatest discomfort of all was the silence—heavy, cold, unfamiliar. 

Edgar Lee Masters, the poet who wrote about silence in all its forms, might have struggled to describe the silence between a bunch of middle-aged, middle-class parents and their teenage children locked in these dorm rooms for two nights, with no TV screens, no internet,  no noise…nothing but their thoughts and the weight of unspoken differences. 

It was in that silence that the truth hit many of us: it hit us that we do not know what we are dealing with in the form of the Gen Zs living among us and with us, that we had even forgotten what they looked like up close! 

We discovered we may have been living with strangers. While most mothers seemed relatively at ease with the arrangements, the fathers seemed terrified at first; terrified of the closeness, the conversations, the vulnerability — terrified of being outmaneuvered by Gen Z at every turn. 

But here is the good news: if you can’t beat Gen Z, you can join them. Attend the next parent–youth camp—but be prepared. It is a battle of egos at close quarters. 

But it works — My son and I left home as father and son. We came back as friends—friends who now share secrets his sister and mother will probably never know. 

muchiri.karanja@gmail.com