Supporting Dressing Skills in Kids with Fine Motor Challenges

For kids with fine motor difficulties, dressing and undressing can be frustrating and slow. For parents, these challenges can lead to feelings of stress and frustration as well. Before we know it, both parent and child are struggling through the daily routines of dressing. Kids are resistive, parents are yelling, and emotions are running high. There are ways to ease the challenge of dressing for kids with fine motor difficulties, and also to ease the demand for parents who want to promote this independence with their kids, but just are stuck on the struggle-bus of fatigue, frustration, & stress. How many times have we just dressed our kids head to toe because we need to get out the door on on our way to address the other demands of our day?

Daily dressing routines encompass more than just fine motor skills. The time of day, type of clothing, level of motivation, the parent-child relationship, cognitive skills, and organization all play into dressing routines. However, fine motor skills are a necessary and major part of dressing & undressing. It is important to remember that daily practice is key. Nothing happens overnight. Small opportunities for repetitive engagement in tasks that promote these skills will create success over time. The best ways to support it as a parent is to integrate it into your child's everyday routines.

The following tips may help to support dressing skills in children with fine motor challenges:

• Use pants, shorts, and skirts with elastic waistbands instead of zippers & buttons.

• Allow kids time to practice with zippers & buttons on toys, dolls, or old clothes.

• Use Velcro shoes, elastic laces, & zippers. Use other types of adapted sneakers & shoes (Zappos has lots of stylish options for all kids).

• Larger buttons are easier than smaller buttons.

• Unbuttoning/unsnapping easier than buttoning/snapping.  Work on undoing things first. Take it slow and be sure to let them complete part of the task.

• Practice using zippers on everyday items such as lunch boxes & backpacks. 

• Add a handle/grasping tool to zippers for children with delayed skills - there are fun keychain-type items that can be added to a regular zipper handle to make grasping the zipper much easier for your child. 

• Promote hand muscle development & visual motor coordination by enclosing your child's favorite toys & items in zipper-enclosed containers such as small travel bags, backpacks, or Zip-lock bags so that they need to use their fingers and grasping skills to get to the toys.

• Natural practice and repetition with everyday items gives kids consistent, real-life experience and develops their hand skills, which will carry over into other activities such as using scissors, holding writing implements, and developing play skills. Work the use of fasteners into their favorite play time activities.