Reply to 2 year old refuses to get dressed in the mornjng

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "2 year old refuses to get dressed in the mornjng "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]I don't understand. You take clothes out of the drawer and put them on. My two year old doesn't get a say in getting dressed.[/b] Are you expecting your two year old to dress themselves?[/quote]

+1[/quote]

Listen, I get it. If you have a 2 year old who just allows themselves to be dressed, this probably sounds really foreign to you. But some kids fight it. Hard. Mine started when she was even younger, basically as soon as she had the verbal skills to argue with me about it. "I don't want to wear that, I don't want to get dressed, I don't like clothes, I don't like that color" etc.

And guess what? One of the best ways to address it turned out to let her get dressed on her own. I'd put out a few options, tell her she had five minutes, and leave the room. Sometimes she'd make me stay but not let me help. Sometimes she'd ask for help. But literally the only way to get her in clothes was to let her take control. Plus side: she developed the ability to physically dress and undress herself really early, which helps with potty training and lots of preschool activities where they are expected to be independent in those areas.

The funny thing is that she's 4 now and I pick out her clothes again. It happened gradually, but I could see it was stressing her out to have to choose and I started removing more and more choice from the process. Now I go in the her room while she eats breakfast and pick out a whole outfit including socks and underwear, she doesn't choose any of it. She does put it on herself, though.

Kids are weird and they develop different things at different times. You just have a different kind of kid.[/quote]

I'm the original PP. My two year old absolutely does not allow herself to get dressed, it's a huge battle. She screams and runs and it's a headache. But I'm the parent, and I'm bigger than her, and I get her dressed. I really just don't understand the mechanics of an hour long struggle here. Pick out clothes, put them on.[/quote]

Some kids rip the clothes off the minute you get them on. Some throw epic tantrums that will take an hour to recover from if you try to force the clothes onto them. Sure, lots of kids resist getting dressed. But some kids REALLY resist it. If it's taking an hour, this is why. OP obviously understands the mechanics of dressing her child, who I am sure she has dressed from infancy. The issue is that this becomes a major battleground for some kids and they don't acquiesce to the usual methods for getting through it. Your child was different than my child, and from OP's child.

If you don't understand something, often it's because you lack the necessary experience or information to understand it. It's not "well you must be an idiot." Trust me, you will run into challenges with your kid at some point and someone will say to you "I don't understand, I never have this problem," and then you'll get it. Not all parenting experiences are universal. Kids are different, families are different.[/quote]Some things are universal truths. We are bigger and stronger so put the clothes on and he’ll will stop fighting it when he realizes he can do it or you can, but the clothes are going to be put on. End of story. [/quote]

Uh, no, beginning of story.

Universal truth: just because I'm physically bigger and stronger than my child does not mean I should physically wrestle them into clothes against their will every day.

I mean, my DH is bigger and stronger than I am -- if he wants me to do something that I don't want to do, does he get to physically force me to do it?

You think you've figured something out but you're [b]actually just a crappy parent.[/b][/quote]

I would argue the person who lets their kid do whatever they want because they're afraid of being the bad guy is the crappy parent but you do you I guess.[/quote]

Working with your 2 year old so that they develop the skill to select and put on clothes on their own, instead of simply pinning them down and shoving their bodies into clothes, is not "letting your kid do whatever they want."

The fact that you think the only two options are brute force or doing nothing indicates that you do not have a ton of parenting skills and does not bode well for the future. It sucks having to figure out how to get a 2 year old to agree to getting dressed. Like it's the absolute pits and requires lots of creativity, patience, communication skills, and flexibility. But in the end, it is better than physically forcing them because they learn some skills and gain some independence, plus it forces you to find ways to work with them and helps to refine your parenting. Yes, it would be faster to just force them into clothes, and now and again you really don't have a choice and that's what you do. But if that's what you do every morning, there will come a day when it doesn't work anymore. And then what?

Some people just get to "and then what?" sooner because they have particularly independent-minded kids.[/quote]

I'm sorry but I just really can't take seriously the opinion of a person who compares physically forcing my child to do something to my husband physically forcing me to do something. You don't sound very bright. [/quote]
I knew this woman who let her young children dress themselves because of this logic. It was painful to see these children in stained, mismatched, ill-fitting clothes and this clueless lady grinning from ear to ear because her darling children “arE sO creATIve“. People have this existential terror of being too authoritarian, so they invent fictions about how Larlo is so independent and then chase him around the grocery store yell-whispering “now let’s make good choices“.[/quote]This is such a great point. I agree with ya so much. [/quote]

+1 this is so well put that I can see this in my head. I know exactly what kind of parent is being described. And their kids are holy terrors when they finally show up at school having never learned boundaries or how to follow rules.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics