Dressing
When buying clothes, keep in mind that your child will soon want to choose his own clothes when he gets dressed for the day. If it will bother you to have him looking uncoordinated, choose colours that can be mixed and matched.
• If he wants to wear one blue sock and one red sock, let him. Save your energy for the big battles, or buy only blue socks.
• Your child may quickly display an aversion to certain kinds of fabrics. Respect his taste.
• If your child is learning to use a potty, dress him in clothes that he can easily remove by himself. Choose trousers with elastic waists instead of fly-fronts.
• Besides a good waterproof coat and boots, invest in waterproof pants that can be worn over his regular clothes.
• You don't have to have his first shoes specially fitted, but you will want to make sure that his toes are not squashed, and that there is no painful rubbing anywhere. Check the fit of his shoes every few months; it's not unusual for young children to grow through three shoe sizes in one year.
• When your child goes out to play in the sun, make sure he wears a wide-brimmed hat and an SPF 30 sunscreen. In the sunny months, make the application of sunscreen the last stage of getting dressed. But you still need to reapply the sunscreen every two hours or after each swim.
• Children might start wearing sunglasses with a UV filter by age one, if they will keep them on. If they won't or can't, stick with the wide-brimmed hat and keep them out of the sun until they're old enough to wear the protective sunglasses.
