“Pick your battles. Your child insists on wearing a t-shirt and shorts in December? He’s the one who’ll be cold, not you. Save it for something important.”
That wise advice came to me from my kids’ pediatrician before my first child was even born. I was only 19 at the time and that conversation has stayed with me. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve been in the midst of “fighting” over something with one of my kids when I’ll remember “…save it for something important.”
Ironically enough, most of my battles HAVE in fact been fought over wearing clothes. It’s already been well established that CamCam HATES wearing clothes. I really though he’d grow out of this by now, but I still have a streaker in the house.
You can’t even begin to imagine the battle that ensues when we need to leave the house. We live in New England, it’s December, it’s ridiculously cold outside. But CamCam still cannot see why he needs to get dressed to go out.
And then there’s the coat.
Ohhhhh, the coat. Why does he hate his coat so? I let him pick it out himself, I foolishly thought this would help. But apparently a coat is an evil burden CamCam wants no part of. “I don’t need my coat ma, I’m fine,” he says when we’re leaving the house. In the van he will not get into his car seat until his coat is off. Once we get to our destination, I get to stand outside in below freezing temperatures trying to get CamCam to understand why he now needs to put on his coat. Often I have to force him to wear it. We barely step inside the door of wherever we are going when CamCam abruptly stops, unzips his coat, and throws it into the stroller in disgust.
The other night I had to stop at 3 separate places. Once to get into the car, 3 times to get into 3 buildings, 3 times to leave 3 buildings- that equals 7 times I had to fight with CamCam about wearing his coat. As we were leaving the final building I told him to wait, we needed to put on his coat. He laughed and ran for the door. Little Miss caught up to him and CamCam started crying and falling to the floor, “I don’t wanna coat, I don’t wanna coat….”
The advice I got from the pediatrician so long ago came back to me. I said to Little Miss, “Never mind, just forget it. One of two things will happen, either he’ll be cold and realize how foolish he is, or he actually is too hot and he’ll be happy.”
We went outside and CamCam was so happy. He was skipping along, singing, jumping off of steps. He was free.
I was smiling.
And then a couple came out of the store behind me, and I heard the women turn to her husband and say:
“That boy really should have a coat on.”
