Bed-Shopping and Bed-Hopping

I remember very well when my daughter came into the family and it was time to move my son from the crib into his own toddler bed, not like Meredith Patterson’s monster-size bed in the slightest. The toddler bed is low to the ground and uses the same mattress as was used for the crib. My wife had in her mind the type of bed she wanted my son to have for a toddler bed, and so she bought it. I told my wife it was a mistake not to let my son choose his own bed. As it turned out, I was right (which is the whole reason I like to tell this story).

My son refused to sleep in the toddler bed and instead chose to sleep on the floor next to the door. This frustrated my wife to no end, and so began the battle of wills between her and my 2 ½ - year-old son, which lasted for the next 2 years. My son’s bedroom had 2 doors on it, so even though he slept in front of the door, you could go into the room through the other door, and while he was dead asleep, pick him up and move him to the toddler bed. He was a very heavy sleeper. After having done this, invariably in the middle of the night, we would hear a loud “NO!” from his room, and then he would go back to sleeping in front of the door.

The other trick my wife tried was to place all kinds of toys on the floor in front of his door, on the idea that he would find sleeping on the toys so uncomfortable he would choose the bed. Another trick was to take the bed itself and move it right in front of his door. Another trick was to move just the mattress in front of the door. None of these tricks worked.

To be fair to my wife, I should mention that my wife's desperation to get my son to sleep in his bed was that she was convinced his poor behaviour in child care was related to not getting a good rest at night, from sleeping on the floor near the door. As it turned out, the poor behaviour had to do with his Asperger's Syndrome, but we did not know that at the time.

The time came for us to move from Texas to Arizona and we decided it was a good time to get my daughter out of the crib and into my son’s toddler bed and my son into a grown-up bed. So, my son got to pick his own bed this time. (This was primarily a means by which my wife was going to show me once and for all that this was not the reason my son had refused to sleep in the toddler bed for the last 2 years.) To the furniture store we went. He picked out his own bed, and he has been sleeping there ever since.

If in today’s For Better or For Worse, Mike’s story were to be like mine (i.e. the old camera-in-the-house idea), then Meredith would be happy with her new, bed and Robin would refuse to sleep in his because it had sides. All I really know for sure about this week is that it will probably lead in to similar stories about Mike and Lizzie in 1979-80 in the following week. I will ask in advance: aprilp_katje, are there any bed selection stories in the first year collection?