Do you see that pile of laundry on the floor? Please do not disturb it. I need it in order to sleep. It’s not actually a mess, despite being quite messy in appearance. Sure, there are some clothes in there, a shoe maybe, and other bedrooms objects that have been uncarefully gathered into the pile, but mostly you will find blankets, pillows, and even a teddy bear. You see, this is not just an ordinary mess. This is not something to be cleaned up, or put away. No, this is a nest.
I can’t sleep without the nest, so please do not remove it. I don’t actually sleep in the nest. No, that would be ridiculous. Okay, well, full disclosure, I did sleep in the nest once, but that is another story. But normally I sleep in my bed. At least I try to sleep in my bed. It gets awfully crowded in there, what with the wife, small dog, and 5-year-old that all end up there by morning. And that is where the nest comes in. We tried for years (yes, literally and horribly years) to get that boy to just sleep in his own bed. He wouldn’t stay there. He just. Wouldn’t. Stay there. Do you know what two years of not sleeping does to a person? DO YOU?!
We tried everything, but that boy just needs to sleep with other people around. This will be a larger concern when he gets to college, but every since he was a baby he has been someone who does not like to sleep alone. Even if we get him to sleep in his own bed, we will wake up in the morning with a boy sleeping in, around, over, and/or under us. And no matter how many times we put him back in the other room, he always returns, like a terrifying boomerang of insomnia and sleep deprivation. There is only one solution, and that is the nest.
We’ve almost got him trained now. Instead of sneaking into our bed at 2 AM, he will drag his covers and pillows across the hallway and onto our bedroom floor, where he will arrange them in a heap and then nestle down into his makeshift burrow for the night, knowing that he is near his parents. Are his parents real? Do they exist? Will they be there again after he blinks? This is impossible to know from his own bedroom. The only way to know for sure is to be lying on top of them, but listening to them breathing from the floor next to them is a close second best.
Of course in the night the nest will expand. He will roll over and sleepily grab something else within arm’s reach to add to his cozy den. Socks left on the floor, books, towels, whatever he can get his hands on. It really is more like an actual nest than one might think. But in the morning, looking at it in the harsh light of day, it may seem to you to be a random collection of clutter that needs fixing. It is not. If you put it all away, he will only put it back the following night, and make more noise doing it. Just leave it there, on the floor, for him to lazily crawl into. It is comfort. It is security. It is connection. But it is not a mess.