Little Fashionistas
By Julie Tilsner

There is a little girl in our neighborhood for whom dressing up isn’t merely a cute pastime. It is a way of life. This toddler – I’ll call her Claudia – has an array of fabulous, sequined outfits that would make a drag queen sick with envy. Every day she arrives on the scene in a different ensemble. Sometimes she is Snow White. Other days she is a butterfly, or a ballerina, or a medieval princess. “She even dresses for dinner,” her mom Jane tells me. “With gloves and matching shoes and everything.”

Toddler parents agree that dressing up becomes a favorite toddler pastime sometime after the imagination has kicked in, at around 18 months, and escalates until it’s near impossible to get them into khaki colored shorts anymore. It starts when a toddler figures out how to open drawers and pull out whatever clothing items are inside. At some point, they learn how to undress themselves, usually by age two (getting naked is also a favorite pastime, but that’s fodder for another article), and the idea of putting on other clothes occurs to them. Their dressing up charades become more elaborate the more able they become to dress themselves. For this reason, younger toddlers favor hats, which are easy to put on, and scarves and jewelry, while older toddlers like entire ensembles, complete with gold belt buckles and little ties.

Toddlers don’t distinguish between actual costumes and fashion creations of their own design. By two and a half, many toddlers insist on choosing their own clothes for the day, however inappropriate, and you have no choice but to let them. Where do they get their fashion sense? Nobody knows. But if you try to squelch them, you’ll suffer for it. File this under: Pick your battles.