Help Kids Learn About Clothes

Letting kids dress themselves can be an adventure. They may get their clothes on backwards, they may get items in the wrong places, and they may simply not end up in any clothing at all. Over time, getting dressed should get better for kids, but if you really want them to learn about clothing and how to dress themselves, you need to teach them about clothing.

Perhaps the simplest starting point with helping kids learn about clothes and what to wear is to have them help with the laundry. Simply putting clothes away will help them to see all of the clothing that is worn in the home and get a much better sense that there are a lot of clothes that they probably don’t think about. As they get older, they can start doing their own laundry as well since they’ll know how it is done.

While doing the laundry, have them stack and match clothes together. For example, all shirts go in one pile, all pants in another, and underwear in a third pile. Have them stack those clothes by who wears them - as they grow older they should be able to easily put everyone’s clothes into their own pile. While it will probably be awhile before they really start folding clothes, they can at least get them separated for you.

For socks, have your kids start to pair them together. Find two socks that go together and put them together. This will help them to start understanding how clothes match. You can do the same with shoes and any other clothes that you have that have matching parts. This is a really simple task, and kids will learn it quickly, but it is a great starting point.

Outside of laundry, you can give your kid a choice of pants and shirts and have them match them together. Lay out three shirts and three pairs of pants and ask them to put them together in the best way possible for an outfit. Ask them why they placed the clothes together the way that they did. Help them to understand that some colors go better together than others do. Ultimately, you want them to begin understanding why certain clothes go together and others do not.

Once your kids have a general sense of how items go together, let them pick their entire own outfit. Kids will generally do a good job of this if they’ve been shown how to do so. Unless there’s a serious problem with what they’re wearing, let them wear it. Be sure to complement them when they do a good job of choosing outfits and clothes that go well together - give them the confidence to continue to dress themselves.

At some point, your kids are going to want to buy their own clothes. Have them help you pick their clothes before that time. Don’t just buy everything for them. Rather, give them choices and ask them why they’re choosing certain items. Ask them what other clothes they already have that these new items will go well with. This allows them to be part of the buying process and forces them to think more generally about their clothing. This should help set them up for success when they start buying their own clothes so that they don’t come home with 30 shirts and no pants to wear with them. Make sure you discuss buying things like underwear and socks also - they don’t just appear in the closet, but have to be bought.

Teaching kids to dress themselves and how to choose their own clothes doesn’t have to be difficult. Helping them learn this lesson will help them in the future to not embarrass themselves quite as easily.