Laura's Mommy Blog

I’ve always taken pride in dressing my daughter. I like to buy her cute outfits, she is a girl after all, and I enjoy picking out what she is going to wear each morning. That is…. until now. My daughter is really starting to assert herself lately and all of a sudden she has started to demand that she pick out her clothes. Oh boy! I admit that I have a bit of a control problem and I like to be in control of most situations and that includes how she looks, but if you could see what she is picking out, you would agree that she is certainly not qualified to be making these decisions.

Not only does she want to pick out her clothes, but she seems to only prefer a few pieces of clothing. If I let her pick out her clothes, I would be doing laundry every second day and my kid would look like she never changes her clothes. I usually don’t care much about what other people think of me, but I kind of care about what people think of my child.

I remember once a few years back I was working at the daycare where I volunteer and it was a hot July day. All of a sudden, one of the kids showed up and he was wearing a lion Halloween costume. I couldn’t understand why his mom would let him wear that out in public, first of all, and why she would let him wear that in the middle of summer. When someone asked her what the deal was, she just said that he wanted to wear it and she just gave up and let him do what he wanted. My daughter was only 1 at the time, so I couldn’t quite understand how a kid could win such an argument, but boy do I ever understand now! Every morning when I fight with Ava about what she is going to wear, I get an image of that kid in the lion costume. Please God, don’t let Ava ask me to wear her Elmo costume…

So, how do I teach my daughter how to dress properly. Please keep in mind that I am dealing with someone that has no reasoning capabilities whatsoever. Now, I have a couple of ideas in mind:

• What about that show on TLC? Maybe I can send her on “What Not To Wear”. Do they accept two year olds? NO? Crap! Oh well, I’m always the optimist, so maybe the producers will change the rules. Stacey and Clinton, please come find me!
• This next idea would probably be the most effective. We are getting ready to go on a family vacation, so I have been busy preparing my daughter’s suitcase. I got the idea of putting her outfits into large ziploc bag from some message boards that I have been visiting while preparing for my trip. I take each outfit and individually package them in a large ziploc bag. In the morning we simply have to pull out a bag and we’re ready to go. That way my husband can’t mess up her outfits and it makes it so fast and easy in the mornings. So I thought maybe I should do this for her clothes at home. Package her tops and bottoms into bags and then she can pick a bag in the morning. This would take a lot of time though and I would have to re-package them every week. So, I’m not too sure if I want to commit to it.
• I could just let her dress herself and go out looking like a fool. Hey, maybe when she’s older and looks at photos of herself she’ll say “Why did you dress me like that?”, and I’ll tell her that I tried to tell her what to wear, but she didn’t want to listen to me. Right at that moment she will have a revelation that I am always right and then she will always take my advice from that moment on. Ummmmmm, in my dreams, right?

I am kind of hoping that this issue will just go away. I really do not want to deal with it and start every day with an argument, which probably means that my daughter is most likely headed for “What Not To Wear” fame. Well, I hope she takes me on her shopping spree!

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