Power Struggles and I-Can't-Do-It-Itis

I just finished listening to a tape called "Avoiding Power Struggles" by Dr. Becky Bailey. It's mostly a common-sense approach, but it's told in an engaging and memorable way. Her goal is to avoid both permissive and authoritarian parenting and to find a middle ground. The information is geared toward both parents and teachers, and deals with both home and classroom contexts. I found it helpful.

M&M has been my power struggle queen lately. Every. single. morning, we have a struggle over putting her clothes on. She wants me to get her dressed, and I know she can get herself dressed and insist that she does so.

For months now, I've been consistently at least making her TRY to do it herself, or do as much as she can for herself, before I will help her.

It ends up looking like this:

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Time to get dressed, M&M!

I can't. I need hewp.

No you don't. You're a big girl, and you know how to put your own clothes on.

I can't do it. I need hewp. Hewp me, hewp me. Boohoo!

What clothes are you going to wear? Get them out. Okay, good. No, don't hand them to me. You can do it. What goes on first? Your underwear, yes. OK, go ahead and put them on.

I can't. I don't know which way they go.

How can you tell which way they go? You know how to do this. Come on. Hold them up in front of you and look at the leg holes. Remember? If you can see the leg holes, that's the front. If you can't see them, that's the back. Hold them so you can see the leg holes. No, that's the top. Turn them around this way. Right. Okay, now put them on.

I can't. (Whine, whine. Halfhearted, futile attempt without really trying.)

Yes you can. Sit down. On your bottom, yes. Now put one foot through the leg hole. Good. Now put the other foot in. Yeah. Now stand up on your feet. You can do this. No, I'm not going to do it for you. You pull them up yourself. Yes, you can. Come on, pull them up. Now, please. Good job! See, you did that all by yourself. You can do it. Now, where's your shirt?

Then we go through the whole thing again with the shirt, and then the pants, and then the socks. By then we're both frustrated and exhausted, but I try to be enthusiastic and excited about how she did it all by herself without having too much of an "I told you so" attitude.

Alternatively, I'll tell her, "After you get dressed, then you can play your computer game for a few minutes." Since she'll take 2-3 hours to accomplish this if I don't set an expiration point on the offer, I'll set a time limit. "But you get to play the game only if you finish by the time the long hand is on the nine. You have 15 minutes."

By the time the long hand is on the nine, after fifty gazillion reminders (you have 12 minutes left--better hurry!) she's still running around naked, so she doesn't get to play the computer game. She cries for a minute, but then she moves on to something else and still doesn't get dressed. At which point I either end up yelling at or punishing her, and/or I start in with the "Get your shirt. Where's the hole for the head? Okay, put your head in the hole" thing until she's dressed.

I think I've gotten her dressed when she didn't actually need the help maybe twice in the last 2 or 3 months, and that was when we were in a hurry to get to church or something and I decided to just help her before the battle started.

I just don't tend to give in about that sort of thing. I've used all kinds of different methods from incentives to consequences to a combination, but I haven't just given in and gotten her dressed without her at least making a real effort in that direction first.

Yet still, nearly every single morning, she insists she can't dress herself. Even though every single morning she ends up dressing herself in the end.

Last week DH and I talked about it and decided that maybe M&M was looking for cuddling and attention out of getting dressed, so we agreed to try to make more of a point to give her some extra cuddling and attention in other contexts.

With the clothing battle we decided to try something new (since obviously what we'd been doing wasn't working well). We were tired of the battles, and it didn't really seem like one of those put-a-stake-in-the-ground-and-die-for-it issues. So the next morning I told her that I'd put her clothes on for her if she wanted me to, but if I got her dressed then I got to pick out her clothes. If she wanted to pick out her own clothes, she had to put them on herself.

That worked pretty well for the next few days. Most days she chose to have me put her clothes on her, and I chose clothes that weren't her first choice (but which I liked) for her to wear. But on the days she really wanted to wear a dress or her beloved Strawberry Shortcake or Hello Kitty shirt, she miraculously was able to put them on by herself with little to no help or coaching.

Then we hit Monday. She'd done her evening routine (which we'd been letting slide a bit) the night before, so her clothes were already picked out and ready to wear. So I didn't want to fall back on the "If I get you dressed, I get to pick out your clothes" thing again. The clothes were already laid out.

So I decided to try Dr. Bailey's approach.

"Guess what? You have a choice! You can choose whether you want to put on the dress or the shorts first. Which one are you going to choose?"

M&M visibly brightened. She had a choice! Wow, how exciting. She always likes choices.

"Dress first!"

Okay, go ahead and put it on.

I can't.

Well, do you want to put your head or your arms in first?

Ayms!

So she did. And then she started whining about how she couldn't put her shorts on.

Which foot would you like to put in your shorts first?

This one!

You decided to put your left foot in first!

Yeah, and now I'm going to put my right foot in.

Yep, there goes your right foot! Now you have your shorts on. Yay! You got yourself all dressed.

We both ended up smiling, and it only took a couple of minutes.

This morning she wanted to wear the ballet skirt I made with her Hello Kitty shirt from Aunt J, so after only a little bit of complaining she got dressed completely by herself with no help and no coaching other than a couple of hints about finding the front of her underwear.

She was, however, to hear her talk, completely and absolutely unable to dry herself off after her bath, brush her teeth, make her bed, or pick up the Cheerios she dumped on the floor. I helped her a bit with the things I felt she really needed help with, but most of the morning was spent with both of us getting more and more frustrated as she whined and dilly-dallied and I refused to do her chores for her.

When I tried to help her pour rice milk into her cereal, though, she had a meltdown--crying and saying, "NO! I can do it! I want to do it by myself! I don't want you to help me, Mommy! Noooo! I want to do it!"

I let her do it on the condition that if she spilled, she would clean it up herself.

She didn't spill it today, though.