How do you dress a 2.9 year old without tantrums?

[spritesoright]

I'm sure they address this in parenting 101 but I seem to have lost my manual. This morning involved yet another screaming tantrum from DD as I wrestled her in to her clothes for the day. I had been sitting there for 20 minutes previously trying to get her to do it herself (sometimes works getting her to 'show her little sister how to do it', but DD2 was asleep). I employed much enthusiastic "let's get dressed now" to silly "you can't go to nursery naked". All to no avail.
She goes to nursery 3 days a week but we make her get dressed before she goes downstairs regardless. Except on weekends. Maybe I've answered my own question. Is consistency the key? Do sticker charts work on 2.9 year olds?

Sticker charts are the only thing that got one of my dc's potty trained.
Getting my 3yr old dressed some mornings feels like hostage negotiations. It's a balancing act of putting your foot down and distraction but being silly is usually enough. You have to give them a choice then they feel like they have some control - do you want me to do it or are you doing it, me or daddy to help you, teeth first or getting dressed first.

If/when DS 2.6 has a strop about getting dressed, I hold him down and get him dressed.

"You can't have X until you are dressed"
"You can't do Y until your are dressed"
"This is a dictatorship, not a democracy"

Mean mummy

Oh, and DS couldn't give a hoot about stickers!

A bit difficult when you need to be somewhere at a certain time but I would play my son at his own game. So ,I would tell him we were going out and that I was going to dress him ,I would give him 3 chances and if he played up I would go sit on the couch and watch tv. He would soon come begging me to dress him. Took a few times of me not actually going out that morning for him to get the message. As I said ,this was before he had nursery and whatnot and was just getting dressed to go to shops.
Does she enjoy nursery ? Then maybe you can use that to your advantage ...

thanks for the replies. I do try the choices "do you want to get dressed or will mummy dress you?" but found myself asking so many times that I have reduced it to once or twice and then I do it if she hasn't started.

At least I'm not the only one holding my child down to get dressed sometimes, it just feels so needless and I spend five minutes afterwards trying to cheer her up.

I said to DD this morning that she couldn't go downstairs and watch Raa Raa until she was dressed but to no avail...
All good suggestions though, I guess I just have to keep trying.

Standinginline that's brilliant. DD is a sucker for other reverse psychology tactics I have tried, so maybe I'll try that one.

I don't give the choice "shall we get dressed" the question is "do you want your blue or red teeshirt?" "shorts or trousers"
The other thing that gets mine getting dressed is me picking up a teeshirt, and saying "right, lets get these trousers on, lift up your leg" and they tell me I've got it wrong, so I ask them to show me how it works.

Or I just get them dressed, and ignore the protests.

Mine's the same age and I get her to 'run' into her clothes. I roll the top up so she can run into the neck hole. Lots of ready steady go's! Otherwise she tantrums.

Call her bluff.

Seriously I would put her in the car in her pyjamas.

Emily I don't know who would be more embarrassed. But I guess I should get over that.

I think at 2.9 she might still need a bit of help. My dd is 4.5 and still struggles with getting things over her head and some things on the right way round.

For what it's worth, I make it into a race and time her, it vaguely works sometimes. We don't have TV on on nursery mornings.

We had this with ours. I am mean and don't bat an eyelid at following through. As a result as promised, he went to nursery in just his vest and pants one morning. Screamed all the way there but got dressed there by himself. We have never gone out undressed since, although we did go out without socks on the other day and he didn't like that either.

So get a 10 or 15 minute sand timer from eBay and issue the ultimatum that you will go out in whatever state of dress or undress when the sand runs out.

I imagine you will only be tested once or twice.

I put out three tops and three bottoms and let DC choose. Any foot stamping and my standard line is "You can choose one of these and one of these and if you don't like any of them you can go to nursery nudey." Always works.

The battle over socks is slightly trickier and I still recall the look of grim determination on DC2's face walking out to the car in the rain in bare feet after an exchange that ended with the words "I'm NOT wearing my shoes and socks and I WON'T be cold! "

Couldn't be arsed to argue. Just waited by the car with a towel, shoes and socks.

I hear you!! My DS (now 2.10) would stay in pyjamas all day if I let him. At home with number 2 now so he's often not dressed until 10am or so (must do something about that). But we had same issue a couple of months back- it put a cloud over the whole house for a week or two. Stumbled upon a magic solution- we made it into a game using the inbuilt timer function on the iPhone.

Set it for 2 minutes and we have to beat the timer. DS gets to choose the chime sound at the end (favourites here are the duck, robot and doorbell sounds). Sometimes it's a surprise. Not sure if it's just my nutty kid but it works almost everytime- he loves it, suddenly it's 'quick quick quick' from him not me!

A week or two of this everyday and he forgot that he ever really had that power, so would just get dressed. Sometimes we still need to use it, but most of the time I just use a few of the usual 'can't have x y z till we are dressed' strategies. I try not to pull it out too early in the piece as I figure it will be boring one day.

Might be worth a try?

I read something in a parenting book about dressing battles. Basically the mum in the end said 'right, we're going to nursery today and you can either get dressed or go in your pyjamas, but either way, you're going'. It worked; it might have made them a bit late, but when the child realised mummy was not backing down and the child would feel silly in their PJs, they came round to her way of thinking!

I do a 1.2.3 approach with DD (almost 2). So today I asked her to sit down with her snack. She refused twice. I said 'ok, I'm going to count to 3 and you can sit down or I can sit you down, but either way, you're going to sit down' ...sometimes she refuses to say thank you for a biscuit etc and I take it back until she says it as she's been saying it since she was 11 months old and generally says it for everything but lately in company will deliberately say 'no' to test me.

I'd say take her in her PJs (maybe give yourself an extra 10 minutes as by the time she's at the door she'll be screaming to get dressed) or do a 1,2, 3 approach and do it anyway.

Whilst I try and make things fun and silly and employ a LOT of distraction, equally, getting dressed for nursery shouldn't turn into a pantomime every day because you'll just get peed off with it and end up being late anyway as she gets hyped up and runs off giggling. I speak as someone who used to make getting dressed a silly event and has now realised it gets old pretty fast and mummy loses patience as the clock ticks on

I'm with you givemecaffeine, I hate silly pantomimes for everyday tasks and 1 2 3 gets used a lot in our house... (Although doesn't work as well as it used to for some things-these little people are so sneaky!)

Using the timer for me is gold because it takes less than 5 minutes start to finish (including choosing his clothes, getting shoes on etc if I'm organised). So the job is done and we get on with getting out the door. I think he just likes the few minutes of fun and attention, and while it works that's ok with me.

Is she an independent type, would she respond to being given a bit more freedom to dress herself? We had awful battles with dd, who was very fussy with her clothes from about 18 months... At 2 and a bit I drew pictures of what was in each drawer of her chest of drawers (trousers, tops, knickers etc) stuck them on the relevant drawer, and told her that from now she could choose her own clothes. Which she did, it worked like a dream - we've had some odd outfits but most of the time she's really good (she's 3.3 now and lays out her outfit on the floor to make sure it all goes together...!). She does love her clothes though, which helps, and has been able to dress herself easily for quite a long time.

Oh yes, forgot about the reverse psychology bit! I have 2 other dc's to get ready so if my 3yr old isn't cooperating then I tell him I'll go help them instead.