“At this early age, children find the process of dressing and undressing themselves independently to be of great interest. Capitalize on this interest in dressing and undressing to keep them focused on the … process.”
–Lillard and Jessen, Montessori From The Start
One of the Baby Whisperer’s techniques is to shush-and-pat a crying baby to sleep. The idea being that a baby can’t keep more than two thoughts in her head, so if you’ve adequately stuffed portal 1 with shushing and portal 2 with patting, there will be nothing left for crying and the baby will miraculously stop crying.
This didn’t exactly work for us.
But, I do have this theory now that toddlers can only keep one thought in their head, and what a strong-willed thought it is.
As Bean veered from baby to toddler, she started having ideas about getting dressed, namely that it was so totally boring. So mind-searingly boring, Mommies are the worst. So, every time she got dressed, I’d have to convince her that no, now isn’t the time to practice jumping on the bed, nope not time for giving baby gorilla a bottle either. But, with her one extremely strong-willed toddler thought (“must feed baby gorilla NOW. SHE IS STARVING. NO SHIRT, BABY GORILLA”), I’ve done my fair share of baby wrangling.
And then I came across that almost throw-away line from “Montessori From The Start.” Lesson of the day: there are no throw-away lines in “Montessori From The Start.”
Now, when shoving limbs into arm-holes isn’t working for me, I simply ask if she’d like to do it herself. The child literally stops what she’s doing and starts focusing her one thought on putting a shirt on. It’s like I’ve filled that one toddler thought with something actually useful (to me).
She is very keenly interested in dressing herself at this age. I used to ignore her pleas to “I DO I DO I DO” figuring there was no chance of her putting a foot through a pant leg any time soon, am I really supposed to sit here for 10 minutes while she tries to do this? And then do it all over again with the shirt, with socks?
I’ve figured out that if I only help her with the part she’s struggling with (getting a foot through the pant leg), she can mostly do the rest herself (stand up and pull pants up). She’s almost figured out getting a sock over her heel too, now I only need to put the socks on her toes. The shocking thing is that she’ll actually sit there patiently while I get her socks started on her toes, because she knows she gets to take over once the toe of the sock is on. The child is focused.
Anyway, wanted to pass this along in case you also find yourself struggling with getting your child into clothes/shoes/bibs/jackets. Fingers crossed that it works!
(This also works for potty training, if the kid is refusing to go potty. Ask if she’d like to take her own pants down. TAKE MY OWN PANTS DOWN?! YOU’VE GOT A DEAL. I don’t know, they’re strange little precious birds at this age. Might as well use it to our advantage.)
