How To Choose the Best Mattress For Your Child

To help your child grow up healthy and strong, it’s important that you provide conditions for them to consistently get a good night’s sleep. One of the most crucial components of a good night’s sleep is a quality mattress. It’s important to understand, though, that a child’s age can affect how long they’re able to keep certain mattresses. This insight can ensure that you make good purchase decisions to buy a mattress that will last your child for a long time.

Height

Children grow more during their first few years of life than at any other time. Therefore, when you buy a mattress for your child, it’s important to consider their change in height to ensure you buy a mattress that will meet their needs in the future. While a toddler-sized mattress can help save space, it won’t accommodate a fast-growing child for more than a few years. This is just fine if you are planning to move soon anyway, but if you want your mattress to last the full 10-year ideal lifespan, you may want to just go ahead and get a bigger mattress.

Weight

Along with ever-increasing height, the weight of your child will also increase as they grow. This means that they will need a quality mattress to help support their weight to ensure they can sleep all through the night. To save money over the long run, it’s good to choose a mattress that won’t wear out after a few years so that your child can grow into it and still receive the support they need.

Accidents

If your child is prone to wetting the bed, it’s important to take this into consideration when buying a mattress. When children are young, mattresses that they use should be protected by a waterproof mattress cover to ensure easy cleaning and a long lifespan for the mattress. In addition to the protective mattress cover, you’ll want to throw in an absorbent mattress pad made specifically for frequent bedwetters, as it will help significantly with allowing your child to sleep through the night and make cleanup much less messy. 

You’ll also want to obtain a good cleaning product to ensure that their accidents don’t damage the mattress to the point that it has to be replaced. Without these, your mattress will take on quick damage and need replacement in only a few years from the bacterial growth inside.

Activity

For many children, their bed is the center of their room. In addition to sleeping on their mattress, young children will likely play on their bed frequently, which may include some occasional jumping on the mattress. Therefore, if you have young children, it’s good to get a mattress with a box spring to provide the extra support your child needs to play without damaging the mattress.

Part of what makes it difficult to choose the right mattress for a child is that they’re still learning how to properly care for their belongings. Through gentle encouragement, you can help teach your child how to properly care for their mattress so that they can keep the mattress they have for longer. This will help make mattress selection easier and ensure that you don’t spend as much money buying new mattresses.

By Meghan Belnap

Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.