Power Struggle with Winter Gear

[QualiTcare]

you must have children banging their foreheads on the wall by the end of playtime. it would be impossible to grip anything with those on. mittens are bad enough, but the thumb is at least separate for picking things up. i hate, hate, hated mittens when i was a kid and refuse to make kids wear them because you can't function properly. that would drive me nuts.

[nannyde]

I would LOVE to see a picture of this in action :: Why do you call them picking sweatshirts?

Back in the day I had this kid who had exema from head to toe and it was horrible.

She would itch so badly and pick the sores. No matter what medicine/cream/steroids... whatever she was on... it wouldn't stop the picking. She would pick the sores raw to the point where they would bleed and scab. Then she would pick the scabs. It became a nervous habit of hers and she became a picker to calm herself and to ease the itching.

I could redirect her when she was up and playing but I couldn't do it when she was napping. I would get her up from nap and she would have blood all over her fingernails... the bedding... in the mesh of the play pens.

So I got the idea to block off her fingers while she was sleeping by just sewing up the sleeves of a long sleeved shirt with extra long arms.

It worked FABULOUS and the Mom was so so so happy to have something that worked in blocking the behavior and helping the healing of her sores.

So that was the birth of the first picking shirt. Since then I've come up with a lot of uses for them. They work great and I have a big stock of them in every size and in thin t-shirt to thick sweatshirt material. I have my staff assistant sew them when we are low on kids and she doesn't have anything to do. We make each of them by hand to get the right thickness and to get super tight stitching.

We use them for any reason we could need to block off their hands or to provide easy to get to cloth to their mouths.

I have used them with kids who are cloth ****ers. We don't allow anything in the beds so kids who are used to sleeping and ****ing on the cloth stuffed animals do really well with a thick cloth sweatshirt over their hands. We are able to just wash them so we don't end up with a pool of drool all over the beds after nap. It saves the JMason play yards from the damage done by excessive drooling from a cloth ****er.

We use them to block thumbs or fingers off if a kid has ****ed his thumb or finger to the point where there is raw abraisions on their knuckles from ****ing.

We use them for cold handed kids.

We use them for colicky babies. Having "gloved" up hands is very soothing to fussy babies.

We use them for hair twirlers during nap.

We use them for kids that are double fisted slamming food down and putting way too much in their mouth at one time. We make a one handed picking shirt so they can only eat one handed. This helps them to SLOW down when they eat. It usually works within a few weeks. We change hands back and forth every day so one day they eat left handed and next day they eat right handed. Eating with one hand trains them to slow down and relax during meals. Works great and is so much safer than two handed eating for these kids.

We use them for fingernail chewers.

We use them for pickers.. kids who will sit and pick on your playpen or their clothes during nap.

Mostly we use them for our walks and for an extra layer of warmth during nap. I don't allow blankets in the nursery so if it's chilly in the house we will pop picking sweatshirts over their clothes during nap.

[nannyde]

you must have children banging their foreheads on the wall by the end of playtime. it would be impossible to grip anything with those on. mittens are bad enough, but the thumb is at least separate for picking things up. i hate, hate, hated mittens when i was a kid and refuse to make kids wear them because you can't function properly. that would drive me nuts.

I don't really need them much for playtime unless it's to protect an excoriated thumb or finger.

But they figure out how to play with them in a few minutes. Maybe... five to seven minutes and they are playing like normal. It doesn't affect the use of the thumb. They have ROOM in material. They aren't tight.

[nannyde]

Oh we used them this summer a lot for mosquito bites. I have three little girls that are very allergic to mosqitos.

We use the long sleeved picking shirts at nap time to help them NOT itch while they were sleeping. They would end up with these enormous golf ball size swells from the itching. The shirts helped SO much.

[MG&Lsmom]

I love the picking shirts!

What about fingerless mittens, like with the tops cut off. not completely covered or for digging in snow, but if he can see his fingers he might at least keep them on. Better than nothing.