When you’re a working parent, every second counts when you’re trying to get the family ready in the morning. There’s little time for long battles with toddlers over what they’re going to wear, let alone time to get yourself dressed and out the door.
So, coming up with time-saving tricks is a must. Today’s hint is one I’ve been employing a bunch since I went back to work: Let your little ones sleep in daytime clothes.
In other words, let them skip pajamas, and instead, encourage them to pick out clothes to wear in their crib or bed at night, such as a dress or long t-shirt. This way, if you’re running behind in the morning, at least your child is dressed, or partly dressed.
And like all great hints, my 2.5-year-old daughter came up with this one herself a few months back when she began demanding to sleep in dresses, like the one in the image above, rather than her two-piece pajama sets. Now, we have a routine most nights, after her bath, where she picks out a dress to wear to bed.
I know – this hint sounds ridiculous. I swear, however, that it generally works, and I’m not the first one to suggest it. Katherine Lewis, a “Working Moms Expert” at About.com, is a proponent of it too, as are moms over at BabyCenter, and it also was covered in a CafeMom Studios “Coffee Shop Confessions” video clip.
To be sure, for this trick to work, your child needs to be willing to wear whatever he or she slept in the night before, and the window of opportunity for this willingness may be short. My daughter, for instance, is already starting to increasingly request a different dress when she wakes up in the morning.
In addition, clothes will only work for the night-to-day transition if they don’t become too dirty over night, and not all clothing would be comfortable to sleep in (I think of dresses, like the ones my daughter sleeps in, as essentially the same as nightgowns).
Finally, I’ve found a variation of this hint is worth considering too: Just letting your little one wears his or her pajamas as clothes the following day. In fact, when my daughter decides to wear her Frozen dress (aka her one nightgown) to bed, you can bet it’s part of her outfit the next day.
What are your tips for saving time when getting everyone ready in the morning?
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