How to Reason
Each morning, it has been quite the struggle to get my 1 year old son L dressed. He has his own little opinions and it is similar to what my other two kids went through. My 6 year old daughter E was the worst with this because not only was she opinionated, but she loves fashion and was particular as a little toddler!
When L seems a onesie that he loves, it is hard to get him to take it off. Mostly, we try to roll with it and let him just go to school with his onesie that he likes on. It is harder now that the weather is getting colder. The onesies and clothes that he likes isn’t necessarily going to keep him the warmest, so now there is not really a way out in the mornings except to force L to change his clothes.
One morning recently, I was the one who got him ready and changed. I was trying not to fight with him and just showed him the clothes he needed to change into. Of course the clothes he needed to wear was not as colorful as his onesie (I blame my wife for that), but we were at a standstill since he did not want to come near me and I did not want to go near him. I knew he wanted to get out of the room, but luckily he could not open the door yet.
I tried to reason with him slowly on why he needed to change and after we were done, I would open the door. He wanted to eat and didn’t want to take his clothes off. He especially likes the Burt’s Bees onesies because they have little bees on the foot and he can recognize them while saying BEEEEEEE. This was going to be a struggle.
Eventually, I somehow got a hold of L’s brain through repeating the words change, open door, eat while motioning everything I wanted to do. Something clicked and he walked over to me and let me change him. I put on a shirt and then he knew it was time to open the door, so he walked away.
I wasn’t done yet, so I asked him to come back and change so we could put on his pants. He was now upset because I had lied to him (he wanted to only put on a shirt). He reached up for the door handle and actually opened it…so now I’m in trouble.
L started to go out of the room and I had to get to the door, grab his body, and then bring him back in while shutting the door. It was a whole scene now and all my toddler reasoning was down the toilet. I ended up forcing him to put his pants on and then we opened the door to go eat downstairs.
I think I almost won the battle that morning and he started to understand sequencing. Maybe next time I should motion that he needed to put on pants and a shirt. Hopefully it’ll get easier and also, hopefully he won’t open too many doors in the near future before I can get him dressed.
