New Things
Posted By Jill on May 15, 2011
Mac has an aversion to new things. We are not sure what causes it and can’t recall when it began. We noticed when he got a few great new t-shirts with Thomas the Tank Engine and M&Ms (his favorites!) on them for his birthday – he refused to wear them! We tried and tried to convince him, but we didn’t feel like it was worth the battle, so we generally didn’t pushed it.
Then when we went to the water parks for spring break this year, Mac did not want to put on his new swimsuit. That time, after a few failed attempts at coercion, we did force the issue, because we didn’t want him to miss out on the fun of the water parks, and we were pretty sure he’d have fun once he got there. It was a battle the first time, but not after. We were right!
Then we bought him new shoes… same thing. He refused to wear them until we forced the issue after his others really got too small and we were not prepared to allow him to wear rain boots to church…
When it comes to forcing the issue, there’s really only one way to do it, but Jeremy and I use different methods when in the mode of merely trying to “convince” him to put on the new stuff. Jeremy is pretty successful at the art of distraction. I have done that too, but lately I’ve just used the limited-choice method. ”You can wear this (new) shirt or this (new shirt). Which one do you want?” Or, “I’ll help you put on this (new) shirt, or you can put a different one on yourself.” For now this works, because he can’t yet put a shirt on by himself, or at least not easily.
Friday night I chose one of the last new items from his birthday… blue jammies with M&Ms on them. He’s resisted those for a LONG time, but since the weather is warmer now, we need to move to cooler jammies, which these are. So I set them out, and after a few “no, not these” statements from him, which I ignored, I told him, “Mac, these are the jammies I will help you with. If you want other ones, you’ll need to do them yourself. You have 30 seconds.” ”Oh, ok…” was his response, and he proceeded to put the pants on by himself! He did want a different shirt, for whatever reason, but the really funny thing is that he wanted the red “num-num” (his word for M&Ms) shirt, another new one he hasn’t yet wanted to wear – so I allowed it!
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