OMG ....... cannot put clothes on him !

[sa]

OMG ..... i just cannot put clothes on DS.

for the past 2 days, this is happening .....
after changing his nappy, if i hold him on my lap and put his trousers on, he will arch his back, yell,  escape and run....

after bath, i just managed to put his nappy on. then he runs. i caught him and put him on my lap, he arch his back and scream. i try to hold him and calm him. he started to cry loudly.

he is very strong, and i don't want to break his legs by pulling too hard ...haahaaa.

soooooo exhausted.

please give me some idea how to deal with this. TIA.

[Nikki~Nathanamp;Danielle]

I think you can approach it several ways:

1 - just let him run around with his nappy on and get him dressed later or try a different room to get him dressed in
2 - distract him by asking him to go pick a toy to bring with him to play with while getting dressed, my ds often forgot he didn't want to not get dressed by playing with something of his choosing
3- change the routine slightly so it doesn't feel like something for him to battle over

Sorry, haven't got much time to elaborate now, but will check in later if you want to question anything else.

HTH

[sa]

thanks for your advice

these few days it's very cold here, so i guess i am little anxious to get him dressed asap. i will try to be more relax tomorrow, make it fun and see if it will help.

what i am worried is, he seems to start having tantrum. he is starting to yell and cry hard if he doesn't get what he wants. re-direction works in most cases. but i think he is testing me on this changing clothes business ....... i don't want to create bad habits of running around him with clothes and nappy ..etc.

[Nikki~Nathanamp;Danielle]

I used to be quite firm on getting Nathan dressed in the morning - not too sure why, probably because *I* felt it was necessary to be dressed.  I used to give him a choice - you come to mummy to get dressed or I come and get you - so I ended up getting him and putting his clothes on.  It worked, but really wasn't teaching him anything and was just me being bigger and stronger and enforcing a rule that really wasn't necessary (I thought it was back then, but not now).  Now, I let him decide on when he gets dressed.  If we have somewhere to go, he knows he needs to be dressed to go out, and we haven't actually ever struggled to get dressed for that.  At home, yes he can run around in the nude for a while (granted, it is summer here at the moment).  This time around with my dd, I won't be enforcing any rules on her like I did with ds - it will also be winter by the time she is your ds's age, but I figure I'll make it more of a fun thing, take our time, I'm sure she'll want clothes on if she's feeling cold.  These things are all phases, Nathan has gone through stages of refusing to get dressed, to other times being totally agreeable to other times telling ME he wants to get dressed.  I wouldn't worry too much about it setting up bad habits for later.

HTH

[GG]

If you have central heat in the house, don't worry too much about the cold.  DH grew up in a trailer w/o any heat, and they lived in the moutains and those boys are strong!

[s_olano00]

Sa,

Can you get him to cooperate by letting him choose the clothes?