Child or adult mattress?

[Allme501]

We are about to move our 3 year old in to a proper single bed and are wondering if we need to buy a child's or an adult mattress?

Is there a reason that we need to buy a child's one?

Thanks

It may depend on the size of bed frame- some children’s beds are actually smaller than a normal sized single mattress so that’s the only reason I went for a child’s mattress. I moved my toddler into a single bed at 18 months so felt she was too small for a proper single bed but I would much rather of had a proper single and she would have got longer out of the mattress.

We are getting him a proper single size bed but when we went back to the brand that we got his cot mattress from (little green sheep) we noticed that they sell a junior (age 4 -11) and adult mattress in the single size. We've noticed a lot of other manufacturers also sell junior mattresses but we can't work out why we would go for a junior mattress and not just a normal adult one?

We wondered what other parents had purchased for their children who sleep in single or larger beds?

We just bought an ikea single bed and a matching ikea single foam mattress when our kids were a similar age. I did read somewhere that it's better for kids to have a slightly firmer mattresses to support them, so we got the firmest ones. That was a bugger though as I spent so much time co sleeping with them (they were shit sleepers for years on end) I found the mattress wrecked my back! We did get a memory foam one and I ended up swapping to that for my sake.

Only difference is kids mattress's tend to be softer as they don't need firm ones due to growing bones, go for a soft adult and that will be fine.

I think the junior mattresses are generally cheaper because they are thinner/have less support and this is fine because kids are smaller and lighter. We have kids mattresses as a normal single is too thick for a bunk bed (the barrier wouldn’t be high enough). It is comfortable for the DCs because they are lighter and so there is enough support for them, but for a heavier adult it is less comfortable. I think it probably wouldn’t matter the other way around if you bought an adult mattress for a child.