Self Dressing requires many skills: fine motor and gross motor coordination, endurance, and strength; requires bilateral coordination, motor planning, body awareness, discrimination of sides of the body, and core strength/stability.
By age 1 your child should be able to pull off socks and pull off simple shoes
By age 2 ½ your child should be able to attempts to put socks on
By age 3 your child should put on socks and shoes (but may be on incorrect feet)
By age 4 your child should put on socks correctly and tighten shoestring
By age 6 your child should tie their shoes with demonstration and assistance
By age 6 ½ your child should be able to lace and tie their shoes
To increase your child’s skills in self dressing parents and caregivers need to decrease your assistance. Provide your child with many repetitions of putting on and off socks and shoes in their environments where dressing tasks happen naturally everyday.
Trick for learning how to put on socks. Using fabric scrunchies to thread on and off a child’s foot. Parents can make it into a game by rolling a dice and putting on that number of scrunchies over each foot.
If you or your child is in need of occupational therapy call us today at 586-323-2957 to set up your FREE screening!
Written by: Tracy Atkinson, COTAL
