By Nancy Olsen-Harbich, MA
Avoid the ‘Preschool Diva’ Scene
Playing “dress-up” can be lots of fun for little kids. Trying on their parents’ clothes also allows preschoolers to try on grown-up roles that help them feel powerful and mature for a little while. This kind of dramatic play is one of the best ways to practice problem-solving and conversation skills, and tap into rich and creative thinking. It doesn’t involve major purchases and holds tremendous play value, so parents are wise to encourage it.
But when a preschooler’s everyday wardrobe starts to imitate teen or adult fashion choices, there are issues. A “preschool diva” who sports a fashion haircut, tight mini-skirts, and “kitten heels” is not playing. She is displaying. Child development experts agree that the phenomenon of “four going on fourteen” is NOT good for little kids.
There are understandable reasons, based on their developmental stage, why teens are often fixated on the fashion culture and on practicing the latest fad in their efforts to define themselves as separate from their parents. But preschoolers have a different set of developmental “tasks” they should be working on at this stage. Playfully exploring the world, figuring out how to do things and how things work, and mastering skills like dressing and toileting themselves are what preschoolers need to do.
Dress Like Kids, Act Like Kids
Young children need to hear more about the fantastic things their bodies can DO – run, climb, dance, and move, and much less about what they LOOK LIKE. It is an empowering message for a young girl to hear that she is “strong” and merely a judgment of her appearance to hear that she is “pretty.”
Fashion clothing and accessories are often expensive and impractical for active play and can encourage adults to place priority on children being neat rather than having fun. Complicated clothing can also discourage efforts at children’s independent dressing and bathroom visits, important milestones of the preschool years. Simple elastic-waist pants and t-shirts allow children freedom to dress easily, be creative in their choice of coordinating pieces, and to use the toilet “at the last minute,” as busy preschoolers often do!
When preschoolers are dressed like little kids, they tend to act like little kids and be treated in age-appropriate ways by adults. Provocatively dressed preschoolers may unknowingly send the wrong message to adults with poor boundaries.
We need to preserve the early years of childhood. Spare your child and your bank account from giving in to the pressure to join the “fashion culture” too soon.
Nancy Olsen-Harbich is Program Director and a Human Development Specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County’s Family Health and Wellness Program. She can be reached at 631-727-7850 ext. 332 or at no18@cornell.edu.