Hellobee Boards

DH mostly gets DS ready in the morning and he really encouraged independence. He never really went through the "I'll do it myself" stage. We had to kind of push him along.

When I was getting him ready it was more like @erinbaderin: where I just wanted to do it myself so it would be quick. But now at 3.5 he can dress himself and it's pretty nice. I can pull out clothes for him and tell him to get dressed and he does. I don't need to hover or make sure it happens the right way.

Ha, my son is 6 and he'd totally let me dress him. He's independent in certain things, but in others, he likes to be babied.

My son had a tough time with getting his shirts on over his head and would often get tangled, so rather than deal with those meltdowns, I helped him longer than I probably should have.

Sort of neither. I just started to offer, like "here are your pants, do you want to put them on?" and she started doing it herself. If he isn't interested, then yeah I would say just keep dressing him, he'll take over eventually.

I don't think it is worth the battle. DS is almost three and likes to dress/undress himself, but also asks for help on some things (especially shirts). IMO, the goal is help the acquire the skill, not to make the use it every day. So if he learns how, even if he doesn't like to do it, I consider that a win (ie: he would be able to do it at school if needed). But still, at this age, I really don't think it is worth fighting if he isn't interested.

@erinbaderin: lolololololol. My 3 year old thinks it's the funniest thing ever when both his legs end up in the same leg of his shorts so he'll put them in like that repeatedly while laughing hysterically. Meanwhile we were supposed to be somewhere an hour ago.

To answer the original question though, it's a little of both. He goes through phases of wanting to do it himself so I try to let him practice but he'll also go through phases of totally refusing and I'm not going to fight it now. He can do shoes, pants and undies pretty well and take off shirts. He needs help putting on shirts and socks usually.

I think my 3yo would have let me do it for him forever.. he's lazy about that stuff haha.

We encouraged him to. If he's in a particularly bad mood he really has trouble dressing himself/putting on shoes.

@looch: lol, this is the same for my 6yo. He has been dressing himself more or less since...4? But to speed things up, I will still help and he loves when I lay out his clothes for him. On the other hand, my DD has been getting dressed by herself since just after 2. She could put on tights by herself by 2.5. She's 3.5 now and often wakes up before everyone else and will get fully dressed, picking everything by herself!

I still have to make my nearly 5yo usually by counting. He never cared to do it himself but he can...

At 3, LO could do pants and underwear (almost always backwards), and now that she's 3.5, she can dress herself the right way. I swear it happened overnight. We always gave her the opportunity to try, but she wasn't even interested in taking shirts off (pretty hard for them, I think) until about a month ago.

DS1 is 4.5 and apparently only knows how to dress himself if there's something in it for him. Like, he can't play a game on my phone unless he's dressed. And that's only a weekend thing where really, there's not a huge timeline. It took him 30 minutes to get dressed this morning. A lot of crying. By both of us.