Getting Ready In the Morning.

June 29, 2007

For the last couple of months it has been a daily battle to get Forrest dressed in the morning. It would usually take between an hour to two hours every morning to get him dressed. I would end up sitting in his room directing him on what he needed to do next. I was at my wits end with what to do when I found an idea at Meckmoms.com for helping your children clean their rooms. The basic premise is that when a child is asked to do something it can seem so overwhelming that they just won’t even attempt to start whatever you have asked of them. The idea is to break the task into smaller parts. To do this you break whatever task you would like them to complete into smaller more manageable parts. I really liked this idea and decided to try it with Forrest getting dressed. I made up a chart with two columns. One side says To Do and the other side says Done. To help Forrest remember each task I found icons that would represent each task. For example the things Forrest needs to do every morning to get ready are: get dressed, make his bed, brush his teeth, and put his jammies in the dirty clothes. For the first couple of weeks that we worked on this I would go in every morning and show him the pictures and have him go over with me what he needed to do. Every time he completed a task he would move the picture to the other side of the chart. After awhile he no longer needed me to talk him through it. It is amazing the transformation in him. I can now tell him that it is time to get dressed and he will go upstairs and get everything done in a reasonable amount of time. When I ask him if everything is done he will proudly show me his chart and tell me that he has completed his chores.