The clothes wars

I admit it - it's my fault. Mine, mine, mine.

T goes through phases where he doesn't exactly regress, but he acts a lot younger than he is. Usually this just shows up in his unwillingness to dress or undress himself. Since I know he can snap, button, and zip by himself I don't consider this is a big deal. I think it's his way of getting some undivided attention, and I'd much rather he do this for attention than be destructive, whine, or seek negative attention. I'm not sure I've convinced R of this, though.


In the morning, I usually ask T if he wants to pick out his own clothes for the day or if he wants me to do it. Usually he'll do it, and to give credit where credit is due, he's usually pretty good about finding clothes that go well together. Usually.


A couple weeks ago, he started this phase of picking out clothes that really didn't go together at all. Which is pretty difficult considering that I try to buy him clothes that mostly go with each other. I mean, come on, you buy lots of neutral colors and they should all pretty much mix and match, right? (I got that idea from What Not To Wear) T has always wanted to wear a red shirt with red pants, even though the reds are usually really different shades. I can deal with that. But this morning, he wanted to wear his red sweatpants with a shirt that just clashed. Loudly. Like Courtney Love finishing up a bottle of tequila loud.

I said no, he had a meltdown. Last week I let him wear outfits that made me cringe twice, and I explained then that I'd offer him two choices of outfits every morning or that he could pick a pair of pants or a shirt that he really wanted to wear and I'd pick out the other half. I thought that was a good compromise, and it is if you're in your late 30's and reasonable. When you are 5 and obsessed with controlling the world on your bad days, well, it's a totally different experience. So the showdown continued for about 15 minutes and resulted in him taking all the pants out of his drawer and throwing them about the room. My knee jerk reaction to such behavior is to be really upset and unwisely begin a battle of the wills, but I do realize that for the most part when he acts this way he's reacting to something specific. So, I tried to change gears: what did he want for breakfast? That didn't work....he's catching onto my tricks. He was determined to have this fight. I refuse to participate. This means incredible frustration for T. So he huffed and puffed and stomped and shouted while I sat on his floor and listened and watched, not saying a thing. (Oh good grief was that difficult!!) But after a few minutes, he flopped down onto the floor and cried, which was a signal that the outburst was pretty much over if I just let him get it out. So I sat there, not saying anything until he came over to me, and then I just hugged him, which unleashed another torrent of tears. It must be awful to have so little control over life and realize it. I didn't have a clue at that age.

When all was said and done, he got dressed in colors I could look at without dropping to my knees and screaming, "My eyes! My eeeeyyyyyeeesssss!" and we made it to school on time. For such a rocky start, I consider that a pretty big success.