Dressing up

I have a book "Creative Play for 2-5s" by Dr Dorothy Einon. In a chapter titled "Development 4 1/2 - 5 years of age", it says that "your child now moves more like a little adult than a baby, and being a little adult also charaterizes many of her other skills and attributes....She now has a great deal more in common with herself at 16 years than herself at 16 months."

Very well said. I say this because Caitlin behaves like she is going on 16 instead of six! She is very strong-minded and seldom does she budge once she has made up her mind about something. And like a teenager who is becoming conscious of her looks, she loves dressing up and looking pretty. Read here for an example.

An idea I have is that we can leverage on the behavior or 'habit' that is their 'flavour of the month' and create activities around it. For example, Caitlin is into dressing up and instead of getting annoyed with her preoccupation with her looks, I could play dress-up with her.

Between the ages of four and five, children start to be able to play pretend. Here's what we can do:

Start a collection of dress-up clothes like old scarves, shawls, hats, cloaks, jewellery, bags, sunglasses, hair clips etc. Also include props like an unused mobile phone, briefcase, apron, utensils...anything that helps them create a character they can dress up as. Make these easily accesible by keeping them in a special box or drawer.

When they decide to go to Nonap Land, it's time to dress up and have fun! This encourages their creativity and imagination, and the act of putting on and taking off clothes, buckling up, fastening or unfastening buttons, etc gives them fine motor skill practice.

Then, once they are dressed up, it is drama time. They can act out their character in an imaginary scenario and play to their hearts' content.

The book by Dr Einon mentioned that "when she dresses up and plays at doing the things adults do, she is able to think about the roles other people play in her life."
It also lists what the child learns:

. to see and understand you as a separate person
. to see herself and her role in the family.
. to amuse herself.
. to become clearer about her gender identity and to understand differences between men and women.
. to spend time by herself (thus giving mummy 'me' time to have her coffee break!!)