The Standard Procedures of Getting Dressed

For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to teach J to pay more attention when getting dressed. Too many mornings he’ll come down with his shirt inside out. Workout shorts on backwards. He always has one sock on the right way and one on upside down. Our camping trip to Banff and Jasper was really the last straw for me on this. He would dress in the tent only to come out looking like a mismatched hobo (to be fair we were wearing grungy camping clothes). It was such a pain to have him go back in the tent to “fix it.” Or worse, his left sock would be slipping off his foot because he put it on upside down and so we would have to pull his shoes of and fix it for him before the start of a hike. He honestly has no clue when he messes these things up. And he gets really embarrassed and frustrated when he as to “fix it.”

For days after our trip I couldn’t figure out the best way of going about this. Telling him his shirt was inside out didn’t do anything. Telling him his shirt was on backwards didn’t do anything. In fact, he seemed even more confused as to what to do. I’d show him a pair of underwear and say “Look, this is the front of the underwear” and he’d still come out with it on backwards. This clearly wasn’t a motor skills issue. He can button and zip and snap anything on his clothes (it’s not naturally easy; years of OT has helped with this). I started realizing that this was almost a proprioceptive issue–almost a deficit between his mind and body–or outside objects and their relation to his body. Front and back. Inside and out. Years ago he had the same problem with prepositions. He didn’t know what I meant by putting the book, “on, over, under” the table. He didn’t know where those words were in relation to him.

I decided to use his anchor chart for this. (Yes he has an anchor chart nailed onto his wall in his bedroom). And I decided to just tackle the “backwards” issues and leave the “inside out” issues for later. I also wanted as little words as possible. Verbal commands just seemed more confusing and frustrating for him. I also wanted to make sure he was more mindful in dressing. Too often he’s in such a rush to get dressed and get going he doesn’t check the mirror when he leaves the room. This is what I came up with:

I would never have thought in a million years that I would be spending late nights as a parent drawing skivvies on outlines of human bodies.

Forgive my lack of artistic ability. Even with a google searched and printed outline of a human body I can’t make this human look human. Ken doll hair. Spandex yoga pants. I chose to make a dotted line for a tag with the word “tag.” So many shirts now have no tags and just writing on the shirt where the tag is supposed to be–probably as a result of a lot of kids having sensory issues over tags 😉

Once again I was going for minimal words. I changed the directional words to “top” and “bottom.”

So far it’s great. J is really self-conscious about privacy right now (which is great–at this age he should be) so this lets him figure it out himself without me watching over him. It’s really funny. He’ll spend a good 8-10 minutes getting dressed now and I know he’s really trying to figure out the chart and how he translates that to himself.

Every morning now everything is on the right way! Sometimes we still get an inside out shirt, but the tags are in the back! When he gets this down more efficiency, then I’ll have to brainstorm a way for “inside out and right-side out.”

Maybe this will make school mornings a little less stressful and easier. But for now, let’s just live up what’s left of summer.