Bigger Clothes & Room To Grow

I just walked out of  my 2 year-old’s preschool parent teacher conference. Conner is meeting all of the cognitive, emotional, social, physical etc standards for a 2-3 year old. Except, he is having difficulty putting on and taking off his own clothes.

Hmmmm….well I help dress and undress him every day with no problem and he looks perfectly fine in his t-shirts and short.

But, the reason why he’s having difficulty I find out from his teachers, is because the clothes are just a little too tight. Just a little. They look perfectly fine once on him, but there’s no wiggle room for him once he’s in them to grab one arm sleeve with one hand, to slide one arm out, then the other and then push the whole thing over his head through the neck hole.  And as he tries…he gets frustrated, so starts to sweat (plus it’s already hot) which makes him sticky and then it gets even harder to take off.

Poor kid. Here I am thinking I am a good mom and before he turned 2, I bought him 2 year old sized shirts and shorts. But now, he was actually already 2.5 years and still in those same 2 year old clothes and I hadn’t gone out yet to buy him size 3.

It’s just a standard number to give parents an idea of what clothes to buy based on a kids’ age, but must be considered depending if your kid is “average” size or a little bigger or smaller. Conner is on the smaller side, but…

The big important lesson I learned just now is: He needs more room to grow.

We all do.

By giving a 2 year old a size 2 and keeping a growing 2.5 year old in a 2, I wasn’t giving him the full capacity to potentitally grow to start acting like a 3 year old. He couldn’t start taking off his clothes independently because I also hadn’t allowed it and was routinely doing it for him morning and night without a thought of if he could do it on his own. Had I thought to let him try, watch him struggle, analyze why it was hard for him, then maybe I would have realized for myself that he could benefit from bigger clothes.

That’s how life is huh? We are so busy going, going, going…that sometimes we don’t realize that the people around us are totally capable, ready to grow and want to try and be more independent, but can’t if you keep dressing them in a size 2 t-shirt.

So the lesson from this “not quite satisfactory” point on Conner’s parent teacher conference form: 

Buy bigger clothes AND give others some room to grow!