How to Work Toward Developing Dressing Skills

Dressing time with babies can be an opportunity to work in some social skill development. Playing peek-a-boo, singing songs, and making silly faces are great activities when dressing very young children.

As we transition to teaching children to dress themselves and be more independent, it is sometimes frustrating for parents to allow the child time to explore and meet this new challenge while allowing them to struggle a bit independently.  We hope that some of the tips below will help as you take on this new challenge. 

• Use over-size clothing. It is easiest to get on and off. Pull a shirt out of mom's or dad's closet!

• Start with undressing. Children will typically learn to remove clothing before learning to put it on. Shoes and socks come first, then pants and shirts.

• Use a time of the day when there is no rush. Trying to teach dressing skills with the patience you need is more difficult when you have time restriction. Many families choose to work on dressing independently in the evening when changing into pajamas. Other options are during play time when the child is well rested.

• Use short, concise verbal cues to help children with sequencing. For example, "Shoes on." A calm voice can help with frustration.

• Start with clothing items that have elastic waists or t-shirts that should be easier to pull over-head. Pajamas are great when just starting to work on dressing skills.

• Break down some dressing tasks and work on them different ways. For instance, buttoning is a more challenging part of dressing. Help children learn this skill by having them pull coins out of play-doh, and then progress to un-buttoning.

• Children learn by doing things over and over, but they can lose interest with the same activity.  To make dressing more interesting and fun, we encourage parents to use playing dress-up.  This is an opportunity to learn these dressing skills while in the context of playing.

After Halloween is a great time to pick up sale costumes so your children can practice with those, too!