obsession about clothes in 3 year old boy

[Clare21]

Our 3 yr old son is completely obsessed about wearing a particular set of clothes. It started with shoes - he has been wearing his Woolies trainers now for 6 weeks spurning his other shoes. Then it moved on to trousers - he will wear one of two pairs of tracksuit bottoms only. Now he's starting to demand the same t shirt every day (stupidly I made the mistake of ironing it dry one morning so now he expects it when it's drying) and for the first time this morning had a tantrum about not being able to wear his special blue pants. A colleague says her 6 year old son does this. HELP! Is there any way I can help him into the rest of his wardrobe? I am anxious that this doesn't affect his twin sister as I can't handle both of them doing this simultaneously. thanks very much

[BettySpaghetti]

Could you give him a choice between two sets of clothes in the morning -that way he has some control in that he chooses his outfit?

[MamaG]

My DS does this too - shrieking "nooooo I want those trousers" and struggling to take off the ones i have put him in.

To be honest, I'm a bit no-nonesense and firmly tell him that those are the ones he's wearing and if he cries, tough [hard mother emoticon]

Tell him nicely that he must wear the other clothes, Think of something he enjoys doing, e.g. i say "oh this is your sandpit / football / fishing etc t shirt" to persuade him into it when I can't face the full scale battle!

[Jaynerae]

I recently bought my daughter some socks - the sports type with the padded bottoms - she put them on stood up and said I don't like these socks they feel funny and took them off. I said 'oh that's a shame, I bought those socks because they are the same as the ones Sportacus and Stephanie wear' (Lazytown) - she immediatley put them back on and tells every one they are the same as Sportacus' socks!

DD is also particular about what she wears - likes everything pink! so I give her two choices as BS suggested and use examples such as above to get her into stuff.

Good luck!

[macmama73]

I have started getting DD to put out her clothes in the evening to avoid the screaming and shouting in the morning when we are all rushed anyway.

Aside from that she gets to choose her clothes during the week and I get to choose at the weekend. (not so bothered during the week when she is in kindergarten so her clothes get wrecked anyway)

I do the nasty mother bit too though, if she chooses something that is too colourful/just looks awful. She is better now though (she is 5) and I can reason with her, "ohno, you can't wear a purple stripy skirt with that red spotty top, it doesn't go"

[Clare21]

Thanks so much everyone. I've pinched some of your ideas. Last night I explained that tomorrow they'd be wearing 'bus numbers' so they each chose 2 numbers, I wrote them on white stickers, then we selected clothes to stick the stickers on. When he protested saying he wanted his dolphin top I said 'No, that's not a 168 top!' Amazingly it seemed to work. The test will be whether or not we can keep it up. Slightly worryingly my daughter asked for a 'bus sticker 69' on her pants though...