If your little one has sensitive skin, a hypoallergenic baby pillow is an ideal choice. Don’t forget to throw the baby pillow into the wash occasionally to keep it clean and to rinse out allergens—a small toddler pillow should fit easily into your washing machine.

If your kid doesn’t like using a pillow right away, don’t worry. Smith’s son pitched his baby pillow out of the crib on a nightly basis for the first while, and my son prefers to sleep with a robot-print throw baby pillow rather than the toddler-specific pillow we bought especially for him. Luckily, this robot pillow does tick off all of the expert-approved boxes—it’s small, thin and reasonably firm—and our son sleeps well with it, so maybe we should just let sleeping toddlers lie.