Bear Slippers

Let’s take a moment and reminisce about those cute little matching outfits that your opinion-less child once wore. You know which ones I am talking about: those cute outfits with the matching pants (they even let you dress them in cute little themed outfits, like a train conductor and didn’t say a word about it.)

Oh no, Mommy. Not anymore. The days of your LO being a tiny fashion model are over. Your child now has an opinion. 

We’ve slipped into the “no Mommy, I wear (insert item that doesn’t match anything) today”.

Exhibit 1: 

His pajamas matched until he realized it, at which point he decided to change out the previously matching Cars bottoms for Minions. I tried to explain to him that you can’t mix Disney and Pixar. He didn’t believe me. So for the remainder of the day, he looked like a child’s movie cabinet threw up on him. Oh well.

Exhibit 2:  

I would like to direct your attention to the bear slippers. I tirelessly attempted to convince him that his bear slippers needed a nap and that he needed to put on his flip flops, to which he replied “they wake. See Momma, wake on my feet. Flop (flip flops) napping”…and we proceeded to go pick up his older siblings from school with him sporting fuzzy bear slippers.

So what do you do? You let them. Let them use their tiny new found opinions and independence as much as they want.  These moments won’t last and will be a story of the past just like their cute matching outfits are.

Self-dressing is an important fact of life, because let’s face it… as much as we want to wear our pajamas to work, it’s just not an option. When your child becomes a toddler their brain is developing at such a rapid speed, and part of this new neurological function is motor skills! So yes, your once baby has now developed into a tiny human that can grab, choose favorites, and dress themselves! Here is a great article about those new skills.

Getting dressed takes practice. Thankfully, most of that practice occurs when our children are young and not being mocked by their peers yet for wearing slippers around. (Though, anyone with a teenager will tell you that they aren’t sure that taste is really “developed”.)

-Kirstyn