Is Jumping On The Mattress Good For Your Children?

It seems like a rite of passage when it comes to children jumping on their beds. It’s something they seem to impulsively do from the moment they can stand, without being taught or shown what to do by their parents or guardians, although they may see how much fun this activity is when siblings or younger family members are jumping on their beds. Aside from the obvious dangers, this activity can cause, is jumping on mattresses good for your children? We look at some pros and cons in this article.

Jumping on a Mattress is Good for Your Children because…

1. Of their physical health

If your home has limited space or your child is sharing a bedroom with a sibling, it may mean they don’t have enough space to keep active. This is not generally an issue when the weather isn’t bad, but if it’s a wet and rainy day, the last thing you’re going to want to do is take your child to play outside. However, your child will still need to keep stimulated, will still require physical activity to keep physically fit and need to be tired out, so they sleep well at night. A sleep calculator can help you determine how much sleep your child will need. However, these are just for guidance as, just as we’re all individuals, so are our children. There are many of us that have children that need different amounts of sleep; we may have also differed in our sleeping needs with that of our siblings.

One way to achieve this is to let them jump on their bed - if you don’t they may do it without you knowing anyway because it is so much fun for them. Jumping on a bed can help strengthen core muscles, and be a great all-over cardiovascular workout as every part of their body is moving. It can help with coordination, spatial awareness, and mastering reflexes, which is important for younger children to develop. Any movement is great for the lymphatic system to do its job properly, so even if you dance with them around your home or do some exercises, you’ll be helping their body develop in different ways.

2. Of their mental health

Jumping on a mattress is undoubtedly fun. It’s an activity that is enjoyed and is a great way to relieve stress. Even children are prone to feeling stress or perhaps have had a difficult day - it’s not just adults that experience these types of things. The difference between the two is that children very often can’t describe how they’re feeling or why they’re feeling stressed, which is why they often cry, are argumentative or display some form of negative emotion. 

One good way to help them overcome these feelings is to let them let loose on their mattress and jump. They’ll bounce, fall, jump and then land on their backs or their fronts without hurting themselves or harming others. It’s a great way to get them to feel better about themselves, which could lead them to opening up or just getting over how they’re feeling and moving on from it. 

Jumping on a Mattress isn’t Good for Your Children because…

1. It Compromises the Mattress Quality

General wear and tear naturally lead to a mattress needing to be replaced. Very often you’re told to replace your mattress between 7 and 10 years, even though some mattresses come with a 20-year warranty. However, you’ll need to read the warranty’s fine print, as they tend to often only cover the parts of the mattress and not its entirety. 

If your child is sleeping on their mattress every night, plus regularly jumping on their bed as part of their bedtime routine of actually getting into bed, as well as jumping on their bed for fun, this will naturally cause the spring or foam mattress to lose its buoyancy. The springs will gradually lose their tightness and the foam will gradually lose its rigidity. The more the mattress is used as a trampoline, the worse it will function as a bed. 

A mattress’s main purpose is to be comfortable to repeatedly sleep on over a number of years. It’s not meant for jumping on, so when jumping on it becomes a regular occurrence, this activity will eventually affect the quality of sleep someone gets when using it for its proper purpose. When a mattress starts sagging, usually over the site of where most of the jumping occurs on it, it’s time to get a new one. This is especially important when a young person’s spine is growing and developing.

2. Your Children Can get Hurt

It’s very easy for children to get overconfident when jumping on their bed. Excitement builds the more they jump, as does their happiness. They push down harder on their mattress to jump higher, not realizing the potential dangers that falling off their bed could cause. At the very worst, they could experience a fractured or broken bone, perhaps a black eye, concussion, bleeding, bruising, a busted lip - the possible injuries are endless and depend on how they land and what they land on.

It may be worth ensuring there’s nothing sharp on the floor around their bed, so all toys and books are put away, and shoes are under the bed. If there’s a chest of drawers or bedroom cabinet by your child’s bed, make sure the sharp edges are covered, and also move any bedside lamps out of harm's way, along with wires and cords of blinds, just in case they get tangled up in them. Although we can prevent some accidents from becoming worse, we all need to be vigilant and never leave young children unsupervised when they’re jumping on their bed because we just don’t know what could happen.

Although there are valid reasons for and against your children jumping on your, or their, mattress, even if you tell them not to, the chances of them jumping on any mattress are going to be high. Most of us have done this at some point in our lives, with many of us enjoying the activity by ourselves or with others. There is no harm, as long as no one is hurt or nothing is damaged. Younger children are obviously small enough to not have a major impact on a mattress, however, the bigger the child is, and the more often they use the mattress as a trampoline may mean it will need replacing a lot sooner than you’d expect.