An Update on Deidra and the Clothing Drama

Someone asked me if some of the kids had been teasing Deidra at school about her clothes. I don't think anyone has been teasing her. She just has her views on what = pretty and what doesn't. She's very fussy about her clothes. She's not a big jeans fan either and sometimes she'll wear her fuzzy pants from Old Navy and sometimes she won't. She prefers dresses and skirts, but she's got to have clean stuff for church as well and she's grown in the last couple of months and I won't let her wear the skirts that are too short for her now. She doesn't need to have her butt hanging out. That's where the problem came in yesterday. That and with her getting over being sick and how cold it's been here lately I wanted her to be dressed warm.

She came home from school yesterday and I sat her down on the couch on my lap and we had a good talk about everything that had happened that morning. I explained to her that I didn't have a problem with her picking out her own clothes as long as she looked respectable for school and nothing was showing that shouldn't be and that she needed to be dressed appropriately for the weather. I also explained to her that if she couldn't pick her clothes out in a reasonable time frame that I would be doing it for her and she would lose her chance of picking out her own clothes for that day. I explained to her that because of her behavior that morning, there was some discipline that needed to take place. I told her that I had taken her videos from the library back to the library, she was going to go without being able to watch tv for a few hours after school, and she was going to help me do up her laundry. I told her the fits with the clothes and stuff had to stop. I told her that from now on, she's just going to have to pick an outfit, if she can't do that in a reasonable amount of time (that's also what caused such the fuss yesterday as she made us late to leave because she kept changing her mind), I was picking them out for her and that's what she would wear. She did pretty well with her punishment after school and I let her bring her Punky Brewster DVD to my Mom's last night to watch an episode or two for being good about everything. I also told her that I was going to do some spring cleaning in her closet and remove the stuff that is now too small and that will help the problem of her grabbing clothes that no longer fit.

She got up this morning to go to school and had an outfit picked out in a couple of minutes and was really good about everything. She even asked "Does this mean that I can watch tv after school now?" So, I think that I got through to her yesterday. She did come home and change her clothes, but when I made her help do her laundry I think that helped her to understand some too. At first she thought sorting the clothes was fun and she thought putting them in the washer with the soap and laundry detergent was fun, but when I made her help put them away she didn't like that part of it. I told her that is the part of doing laundry that I hate too, but if she was going to keep adding clothes to the mix by having to change her clothes all of the time then she was going to have to help me do that. So, she knows what the consequences are.