I don’t know if all kids do this or just mine, but my children positively love pillows and blankets. We have a ridiculous number of both and there’s constant bickering about who got the blue one, which of the pink ones is supposed to be on which bed, and worse. It’s lunacy, really.
And then there are the pillows. Across the four beds in our house, we must have at least 20 pillows. I have four on my bed, which means the rest roam the house mysteriously moving from bed to bed seemingly with a will of their own.
It’s okay, though, because much righteousness accompanies the reclaiming of the pillow in the house too, usually right at bed time when things are maximally primed to explode as they seek an excuse, any excuse to avoid actually going to bed.
The worst, however, is when there are sleepovers. When someone else is going to spend the night with us, it’s time to make up an additional bed and while we can scrounge up a few blankets and a mattress, it’s those darn pillows that cause tension again. K-, my 11yo, has plenty of her own. In fact, as you can see in the photo above, she’s got a corner of her bed piled high with colorful pillows and stuffies.
But there’s one pillow I bought specially for G- that has an anti-dander pillowcase on it and that he really likes to reserve for himself. Even if he’s not home that night, he really doesn’t like it being taken for a sleepover setup.
Makes sense to me because the cats spend a lot of time in K’s room and the pillowcase ends up covered in cat.
Cute kitteh or not, that’s a problem.
After our last flare-up around his pillow, I was determined to think about the problem differently and solve it once and for all, without having to buy another dozen pillows to stash in a closet.The key was to make the pillow desirable to a 14yo boy but undesirable to an 11yo girl.
My solution, courtesy of an eBay seller, was to tap into G’s interest in computer games in the FPS (first person shooter) realm:
What do you think? Did I come up with a peaceful solution to end our Great Pillow Wars?