Which Gabriel do you want to be today?

For a long time, getting Gabriel, my three-and-a-half-year-old son, dressed felt like a little morning chase. I would lay out an outfit and call him; he would disappear down the hall. I’d find him, and off he’d go again. And the later it got, the more I wanted to solve the problem quickly.

If your child refuses to get dressed in the morning, you may know the sort of scene: a task that should take three minutes, an adult watching the clock and a child who suddenly has very strong opinions about his trousers.

One morning, instead of preparing one outfit, I laid out three on the bed.

He stopped.

He looked at the clothes much more carefully than I expected, then picked one.

And got dressed.

The boundary hadn’t changed

That small change reminded me of an idea I really like from How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: when possible, replace a power struggle with a choice.

I wasn’t asking Gabriel whether he wanted to get dressed. We had to go out, so the pyjamas had to go.

But perhaps I could stop deciding everything else.

Which outfit? His choice.

And on some mornings I do the same with other small things. I ask whether he prefers the green or blue trousers, or whether he wants to put his shoes on before his coat or afterwards.

I keep what needs to happen. He gets a little say in how we get there.

A little control, not a magic formula

Of course, it doesn’t work every morning.

Sometimes Gabriel looks at the three outfits and says he doesn’t want any of them. Sometimes I’m too rushed to turn every step of getting out the door into a carefully prepared choice.

But this little habit has helped me make a distinction I often forgot: holding a boundary doesn’t mean I have to control every detail around it.

When I really need something to happen, I can sometimes ask myself whether there’s still one small decision I can leave to him.

That morning, we left without a chase.

The next day, I laid out three outfits again.

Gabriel didn’t win the right to stay in his pyjamas. But he did win the right to choose his trousers.