The very first apart I got was a 1 bedroom with a very very spacious closet. I actually thought about putting a little cot in there to sleep on and just using the bedroom as my tv/entertainment area. My bed wouldn’t fit in the closet though so I nixed the plan.
I think this is one of those parenting moments where you should get out your camera and make careful notes. One day, this is going to make an awesome story for the first boy she brings home.
Like the others and, it seems, yourself, I don’t see this as a problem. She probably just feels safer in a confined space (it’s why we snuggle under blankets even when it’s hot out). I’d leave her be, or maybe suggest a bed tent.
Well, grand-kittens are preferable to grand-kids. just saying.
This is easy.
She just likes it there.
Let her sleep where she wants.
After seeing the sleeping quarters at the Alhambra I contemplated doing the same thing. Still do. Might actually do it one day.
When I was little and scared of the dark, I took my blanket and pillow and slept in the bathtub. It was safe, enclosing and bright with the light on. So, you know, kids can be weird, but there’s kid-logic in it.
I, of course, had not watched or heard of Psycho at the time. Still like a nice, comforting bath to this day.
I loved sleeping the closet as a kid, and still do, to the point that I did it for a bit in college when I had my own room. It’s a better nest situation that a bed offers- more cozy.
I know! But our digital camera is busted. We’ve got enough credit card “points” to get a new one, but its on back order and won’t be shipped until next week.
Darn! Harry Potter got mentioned before I got my fingers to work. Has she seen the Harry Potter movies? Maybe she’s waiting for the owls to arrive and take her away to Hogwarts.
Why don’t you just ask her why she wants to sleep there? I’d like to hear her answer, if she knows it.
StG
She’s shown no interest in Harry Potter yet, so I don’t think that’s it.
OK, I’ll ask her tonight and report back.
My oldest daughter loved her crib so much that we let her continue sleeping in it even after her sister was born 2.5 years later. It’s kind of comforting to sleep in a confined space. I still get a better night’s rest in a 2 man tent than I do a huge hotel room.
Ah yes, who doesn’t have a hermetically sealed, coffin-sized closet in their child’s bedroom?
My son is 5, and I never know where he’s going to end up sleeping. He may be in his bed when we turn out the light, but when I come to wake him in the mnorning, he may have:
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Taken a pillow and quilt and gone to sleep in the closet
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Moved the entire mattress from the bed to the floor, and gone to sleep there
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Pulled out one of the big drawers under his bed, and curled into the drawer with his pillow and blankets.
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Propped up his mattress against a wall to build a “tent” or “tunnel” and gone to sleep in there.
As long as he’s getting a good night’s sleep and not hurting himself, I’m inclined to laugh it off.
Sounds like she would enjoy the Navy, sleeping in one of the very tightly packed bunks. Tbh, I still miss those myself, like my own little cocoon…
Oh, and I had a mattress in my closet as a kid, and slept in there occasionally, and lots of times just sat in there and read. I think we have some ‘den’ instinct somewhere deep in the reptile brain that makes tight spaces seem cozy, and it affects some of us stronger than others. Too this day i still prefer low ceiling basement rooms to a room with high vaulted ceilings.
My 6yo daughter loves to sleep in the closet- she would do it every night if I let her, but I had to stack things in there.
When her friend has a sleepover I set up a little pup tent for the two of them to share in the living room.
You should move to my neighborhood. The houses were mostly built between 1890 and 1940, and have lots of low ceilings in basements and attics. A tall friend of Mr. Neville’s stayed with us once, and his head was brushing the ceiling in our finished attic.
Was the book one of the Childcraft series?
I had those as a kid (I managed to snag them back from one of my older sisters who was planning to toss them) and one book had stories and poems and I remember seeing a drawing/painting of a bed similar. I wanted that bed when I was a kid, too! I remember there was a window in there looking out to the night sky…
I’d totally forgotten about it until you mentioned here.
The Childcraft books I had are from somewhere around 1966 (a year before I was born) and I totally LOVED those books! The Make and Do and How Things Work volumes were my favorites.
If interested, they still make them:
http://store.worldbook.com/wb/product.asp?sku=20236
As long as she is sleeping well and through the night, it’s all good.
This evening durring dinner I asked her why she liked sleeping in her closet and she said “Because it’s more fun.”
Apparently in an earlier conversation with her mother, she said it was cosy. But her reaction to that tonight was to laugh at the word “cosy”.
After reading this post and thinking about it all day, when I came home from a very stressful day at work, I took a book and a light and curled up in the (rather spacious) cedar (I had to remove some blankets.) My fiancee came home, wondered why the sheets were on the floor in the hall… and saw me in the closet. His comment was, “well, if you’re gonna come out of the closet, I guess it’s best you do it before we’re married.”
It felt good to back to that childhood comfort. Perhaps this weekend, I’ll build a fort in the living room…
I think so. I certainly had those, in an edition from the mid or late 70s.