Help us get out of the house in the morning

[k3am]

DD has been... problematic, to say the least. 

Every day, a yelling, screaming fit. It usually has to do with getting dressed. She can't find what she wants, she doesn't like her clothes, etc. We've tried negotiating. We've tried bribing. We've tried taking away privileges. We've tried having her lay her clothes out the night before. We've tried having her come shop with us for things she likes. We've given up on any clothing standards and buy/let her wear whatever she wants. (Which is why she is the proud owner of a psychedelic cat dress, a cat fairy dress, a mermaid/unicorn/dolphin dress, and other terrifying things that shouldn't exist)

Today after almost a half hour of screaming, I had to throw her on her bed, hold her down, and force her into her clothes. (During which she bit her tongue, so now I feel like parent of the year). Once she's dressed, it's fine. Her teacher says that by the time she gets to class (8ish), everything is fine and he's not having any extraordinary issues at school. 

My only thought that we haven't tried yet is taking away all of her clothes and all of her choices and only letting her wear what we pick until she earns them back... which seems a little extreme. Or maybe taking away all of her "fun" choices and limiting her options to very basic things? But at the same point, neither of us have the time or patience for a daily 30-45 minute tantrum about them. 

I'm open to suggestions. 

[erinshelley21]

If she's already throwing a fit for the whole morning then taking away her fun clothes seems like a good option.

What is the morning like before it's time to get dressed? Does she play or watch t.v.?

Maybe tell her she has to sleep in what she is going to wear to school.

[2chatter]

DS is the same way! He chose clothes last night but DH asked him something about them (TABOO) and DS freaked out and put them away. Then could not choose new clothes.

I think with DS we are going to start choosing five outfits for the week. Those will be in his drawers. The rest will be in tubs in the closet. I think he gets overwhelmed with choices. He’s also incredibly picky. I think we need to just give him only what he wants in a smaller quantity.

I hope you find a solution.

[k3am]

Dec 15, 2017 12:56:07 GMT -5 erinshelley21 said:

If she's already throwing a fit for the whole morning then taking away her fun clothes seems like a good option.

What is the morning like before it's time to get dressed? Does she play or watch t.v.?

Maybe tell her she has to sleep in what she is going to wear to school.

Mornings are very boring. Wake up, breakfast, go to school. There is no time for play. We only recently started letting her watch 1 TV show in the evenings, but that has since been eliminated, so we're back to no TV during the week at all. 

[twinmomma]

We don't give our kids a choice. DH and I grab two outfits from their dressers, put them on the couch, and our kids get dressed while we finish getting other stuff done. Granted, I can't get them to actually put the clothes on their bodies in a timely manner and we still end up yelling and fighting about that, as they stroll around naked wasting time. But we did remove all choices from the equation.

[phdmomma]

Not a ton of help here. DS (6) picks his own clothing out in the morning. The only current rule is no shorts, as we live in Wisconsin. He doesn't really care, and I suspect just grabs the first thing.

DD (2) has much more of a preference. We've let her pick out a bunch of character shirts that she likes from the store (puppy pals, paw patrol, an astronaut shirt, ect.) typically she wants one of those and pants. Our biggest struggle recently has been that tights are not pants, so she needs to wear them with a dress or shorts with the tights under. Sometimes I do have to pin her down.

k3am, I am totally in favor of the punishment fitting the crime, so I don't personally see anything wrong with taking away your Dd's "fun" clothing until she earns it back. But then again I often take things away like that and they have to be earned back. Like DD likes to sleep in a nest of stuffed animals. If she won't stay in bed, the she starts losing them.

[waverly]

DD did this for a while. I had to literally shove clothes on her and it made me so mad. There were various stages so I did different things and can't remember it all.

If I can get away with it what works best is to take me out if the equation all together. If I am not there she has no one to fight with.

For DS that meant buying him an alarm clock and not waking him up myself.

For both kids I had a get dressed chart where I drew out the steps of getting dressed.

Me working 9-5 instead of 8-4 helped with this too. I switched because now they are school age there is before and aftercare and I didn't want to pay for before care.

They have also had various versions of chore charts and stickers and the latest is more a routine chart than chores.

TV is my bribe always since DS is very TV driven and DD is very DS driven.

[mustardseed2007]

Two suggestions:

1) TV. Turn on the tv and if she's the type that will zone out, dress her while she's zoned out.

2) Does she sleep in pajamas? If not, have her start sleeping in pajamas and have her dress herself or help you dress her. If she does not willingly get dressed herself, just walk away and let her know you're leaving in "XX minutes" then take her to school in her pajamas with an outfit in a bag.

#2 is a kind of common strategy at our school b/c it's montessori and the teacher are really game for that kind of natural consequence and it's actually their suggestion. If your school would not be cool with that, then obviously don't go that route.

I'll also say that personally, I've never done #2 but I know it happens occasionally at our school and normally the kid only does it once or twice.

ETA: Oh I see you have no TV. I wouldn't mess with that then, b/c no TV is probably the better parenting choice. #2 might work though?

[sudokufan]

DS's currency is play time (with me, unfortunately). We have a weird routine but the upshot is that if DS is fast enough getting dressed and downstairs and helps me get our stuff together, than we'll have time for about 5 minutes of playing dinosaurs. He LIVES for that 5 minutes. I..do not. But, it's worth it to me for the ease of getting him dressed and teeth brushed and etc. Better 5 minutes of play time than 20 of tantrums.

[ECB]

Dec 15, 2017 13:44:55 GMT -5 mustardseed2007 said:

2) Does she sleep in pajamas? If not, have her start sleeping in pajamas and have her dress herself or help you dress her. If she does not willingly get dressed herself, just walk away and let her know you're leaving in "XX minutes" then take her to school in her pajamas with an outfit in a bag.

 

This is along the lines of what I was going to suggest.

first, I think you need to take the choice away from her, at least for now.  Pick out the outfit for her.  Then, if she starts a fit, just say "O.k. - you'll wear  your PJs to school.  I'm not arguing with you over this." and walk away.  And... if she doesn't change, take her in her PJs.  

Initially, sure, take a change of clothes to school.  But be careful that doesn't become the norm - that it becomes the teacher's problem to deal with.  

But I'd basically just stop fighting.  The very natural consequence of not getting dressed is that she has to go to school in her PJs. 

[mustardseed2007]

ECB, you're right! You could just not take clothes to school. That would be good too!

[mommyatty]

I’m loling because DS fights every day for the right to go to school in his Spider-Man pajamas. That would so not be a consequence to him!

With DS, he gets to pick. Has about a minute to pick. If he doesn’t, we pick 2 choices for him. He has about 30 seconds to pick between those two. Then if he’s still not cooperating, we pick for him and hold him down if necessary. That has only occurred twice. He was so shocked we were “mean” that he straightened up pretty quickly.

[mustardseed2007]

mommyatty, this is totally a potential pitfall. I think it depends on how your kid is going to react to other kids' reaction when they see him in his pajamas. It probably depends a lot on age and stuff.

What the school staff has said is that many times kids saunter in like it's all cool but pretty quick they decide they don't like it.

On the other hand, there was a 3 year old boy in DD's class that last year daily wore outfits that I swear were pajamas, and this lasted for maybe a month? Maybe more? I just don't know if they actually WERE pajamas or if that was just his outfit. He seems to wear what I would call normal outfits now.

[leap]

I would have her pick out what she is wearing the night before. I always seem to have more patience for the girls picking out their clothes if we do it at night. When it is time to get dressed, I would set a timer for her. When the timer goes off, she needs to have her clothes on. If the timer goes off and she isn't dressed, she wears PJs to school.

We also tied getting dressed to a reward. My kids get to watch one TV show when they are already to leave. They have to be dressed, hair and teeth brushed, and shoes on. If they aren't ready when the timer goes off, no TV. You could easily make this something else that she would care about.

[k3am]

leap, we have her pick out her clothes the day before, but then suddenly the next day it's not what she wants. Cue waterworks, screaming, tantrum.

I was the same child growing up. Tantrums up the wazoo. She's actually not as bad as I was. At least her tantrums only seem to be at home and occasionally school so far. My mom never figured out the magic way to deal with me, and I'm worried we're headed into the same territory.

[niki]

We did have to take away clothes, but I made sure it wasn't viewed as a punishment. I simply put all of his clothes in the laundry room and told him what was in his closet was all there was clean. That worked until we got back on track.

We also have had to hide all tablets and remote controls before we go to bed to avoid any problems stalling with those things instead of getting dressed or eating breakfast.

[leap]

k3am, I get it. Sometimes my daughter changes her mind too. But if I don't let her pick her clothes, it is a much, much bigger fit to deal with. Sometimes just limiting her to two choices helps. And she has some favorites that I can usually count on winning her over for the day. The problem is when all the favorites are dirty.

[whattheheck]

Does she take a bath/shower at night? If so she is clean. After the shower have her sleep in her clothes for the next day.

[ilovelucyvv]

We use bribery. Right now it is an advent calendar but tv or snacks work too. You don’t get xyz until you get dressed

[sdlaura]

Dec 15, 2017 20:12:15 GMT -5 whattheheck said:

Does she take a bath/shower at night? If so she is clean. After the shower have her sleep in her clothes for the next day.

This is what I was going to say. This is what DD (5) does. It was her idea after I told her that’s what her cousin does. With DS1 (almost 4), he prefers to sleep in pajamas. While he’s on the potty after waking up, I go pick something out and put it on him when he gets off. If he freaks outs and doesn’t want it, he can’t come down for breakfast till he puts something on. My kids are food motivated.

[freezorburn]

A checklist where he can physically cross off items has helped DS in the past. And we are currently trying them again because he seems to be regressing. Our checklists tend to evolve based on current challenges and have a varying level of detail, depending on what we have found helpful.

At the beginning of this school year, it looked something like this:

Pee

Get dressed

Eat breakfast

Vitamins, Claritin

7:20 shoes on
7:25 open garage door
7:30 get in car

We also do self- assessment once we are in the car. Do you think this morning went smoothly? Yes? Yay us! Or no? How can we do better tomorrow? Etc

[campermom]

DD picks out her outfits and I approve them (check to see if it matches, ok for weather, is it ok for P.E., etc) on Sundays for the week and we have a thing that hangs in her closet.
I also like freezorburns idea of self assessments. Sometimes I ask the kids how we did on a scale of 1-10, and what could each of us have done (making sure to include myself) to make it better.

Given what you shared, I agree that taking her choice away is a consequence that fits the behavior-I don't think that's too harsh.

How old is she?
How does getting dressed go on the weekends?

[divanerd]

Hugs.... All suggestions are good. He wears a uniform I prep for the while week. Mondays are tough for us. I even put him to bed early on Sunday.
We make it out the house intact though:)

[kimberlybb]

We went through this stage with DD and it was so frustrating! I did take away all her clothes at one point but honestly that was more work for me. We ended up having her pick out an outfit the night before plus two back up outfits. We still had mornings where we had to wrestle her into clothes but they were less frequent. Isn’t your DD 4ish? I think by 4.5 DD was a lot better about clothes and mornings became much easier.

[sweetptater]

I am all for sending kids in their pjs to school. I figure they'll only do it once before they realize you're serious.

Have you thought about culling her clothes to just a few outfits? Having too many choices could be a cause of anxiety. Maybe narrow it down to 2 dresses, 4 pairs of jeans, and 5 shirts?

[2chatter]

This weekend I figured out that DS thinks certain shirts only match certain pants. So what happens is if the combos end up off, he “doesn’t have any clothes”.

He only wears black, grey and navy sports pants. With the exception of navy, which is only one pair, this is entirely in his head. He has three of the under armor logo shirts. The grey logo only matches one of three pairs of black Nike pants with a white side stripe, or UA pants.

I had NO IDEA that he was rigid about this - to this level of detail - but now it’s easy because we match five outfits and he knows that those “go together”. He was also trying to check “if I wear this shirt and these pants today what do I wear on Thursday” but as you can imagine I neither understood that (he was dressed! We could leave for school! Let’s go!) or had any patience with that.

Does your DD have specific considerations that are challenging her?

[k3am]

kimberlybb, she'll be 5 in February. (OH man, where does the time go?!?!)

Today was successful, but we had extra leverage, since seeing Santa is on the agenda for this afternoon. We've had a lot of talk about how if she continues making good choices in the morning, we'll let her keep her fun clothes, but that the minute it becomes an issue, all of her fun clothes will be taken away and she'll have to wear whatever we choose. (Friday, her punishment was that I was going to pick her up early from school so she couldn't see any Christmas lights on the way home... and of course, I was running lateish and a lot of lights were on already, so I made her ride the whole way home with her eyes closed.)

[k3am]

2chatter, the only concern that she voiced so far was that she didn't have any "winter" clothes - I have a few holiday/winter only sweaters that I wear, and she wanted some too. Which had been remedied (I pretty much just handed over my wallet at Target), but didn't remedy the situation.

[2chatter]

k3am - lol at the Target comment so true.

DD at this age - if she was in trouble for anything I took away her uniform jumpers and made her wear uniform pants. A second infraction and she lost her school crest sweater in favor of a plain hoodie. She walked the straight and narrow! So...it sounds like you have a solution that should work and just saying, you could apply to other things. Like, she doesn’t want to do something she was asked to do? Does she want to lose fun clothes for the next day? Use this to your advantage!

[1confused1]

My daughter is older (8), but mornings have become a nightmare. She loses her devices if she throws a tantrum.

I hung a day of the week clothes organizer in her closet (https://www.amazon.com/DAILY-ACTIVITY-ORGANIZER-HANGING-CLOSET/dp/B000LZ1QNO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1513625714&sr=8-3&keywords=day+of+the+week+clothes+organizer). She can pick from any of the 5 outfits (we only do weekdays) during the week, in case she doesn't want to wear what she had picked out.

I also printed out a schedule for her that hangs on her door so she knows at what times she needs to be doing things. 7:15am shower 7:30am get dressed, etc.

Good luck! Hopefully you find something that works.