Getting dressed

[Starfish25]

Afternoon all, my near 5 year old son now refuses to get dressed to the point he is red in the face crying, kicking out and even biting him self. This is all new, he never used to do this. He is on the asd pathway, waiting for a diagnosis with spd. How can we get around this? Is there a technique I can try? There has been days where he hasn't gone to nursery as I physically couldn't dress him. Thanks if anyone can help xx

We've had all sorts of problem with clothing over the years. Ds in now 7 and this is the first year I've manage to get him to consistently wear shoes!

I would think about the sensory issues related to clothes. Are they too soft/tight/loose/scratchy? Is there anything that he will wear consistently? My ds has worn the same type of trousers and top for the last 4 years as I know they are the only clothes he will wear. With my ds I think it's mainly a visual sensory issue, so if he's not wearing his particular colour/stripe pattern he won't put the clothes on. My ds is very particular and sometimes it's a nightmare to find the same top in the right colour way for him. Now if I find a top/trousers I know he likes I will buy them in several sizes.

You might find 'the out of sync child' book useful to think about sensory processing disorders and how they work.

Thank you for the reply. I will check that book out. My son has very limited speech an I wish he could tell me what is wrong if it is his clothes. Is this normal for this to just start to happen? He used to be ok with getting dressed. He does have a thing with tags on clothes but there is nothing new on his clothes. I felt so bad the other day for shouting at him to get dressed

I can't quite remember how it happened with ds. He also has limited speech and at 4 was almost completely non-verbal. So I still don't know exactly what it is about this particular set of clothes that he likes, it's just an educated guess.

I can't remember what age it was but at some point he would just freak out if it wasn't the 'right' clothes and he would just take them off or scream until I did. Before that he would wear whatever I put him in. Having said that he always had a problem with shoes/socks.

Try not to beat yourself up, it can be very frustrating when your child suddenly stops doing something and it seems to have no reason behind it. There will be a reason he's behaving like this though, It could be that maybe he's anxious so he's got heightened sensitivity or maybe it's the process of getting dressed that he finds difficult. You have to look for triggers and try and work out what the underlying cause of the behaviour is, which is often easier said than done!

I will see how we get on tomorrow with nursery. He got sent home today as he wouldn't join in with anything, he was just hiding underneath the table so I thought he might be coming down with a cold but in the house he was totally fine. I wouldn't change him for the world but I wish everything would just be easy for him. If the trigger is his nursery uniform then he maybe we will have to change it

I hope you both have a better day today.

For us it wasn't so much the clothes (although he had to put them on in the right order) it was the transition and it being too quick. Even now I have to leave a gap between getting the clothes out, saying it's time to get dressed, then helping him to get into his clothes.

Could it also be because he doesn’t want to go out? Especially if he associates the uniform with nursery?

We found visuals aids very useful when younger both for telling him where he was going and for helping with getting dressed.