Still wearing winter clothes?

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The last two years we have had a tricky time transitioning from winter to spring outerwear. Two winters ago, we moved to where it is very cold in the winter. They (both of my sons) really like their winter gear. It's comfy and heavy and soft. And last Spring, and now this one, it has taken a lot of encouragement to move them back to lighter jackets, no mitts etc. I am not sure whether it is a rigidity thing or a sensory thing? Or both?

Eventually when they get really, really uncomfortably warm, I know they will take it off, and I haven't been too concerned about it. But the other day when my son was walking from the school to the car, all huddled up in his thick winter hat with ear flaps, gloves and jacket, I realized how different he looks than the other children (who are wearing t-shirts or light jackets and no mitts or anything). I am worried that he will be teased about it. I have tried talking to them about it gently, as in, "The other children are wearing only t-shirts. It's getting too hot for your hat. Wouldn't you be more comfortable in lighter clothes?" But he/they pretty well ignore me.

So I guess my question is how much do you push when you know your child is doing something that makes them stand out from the other children/ look awkward/ different etc.? My instinct is just to let them be. I don't really care. I was always a little different, and sometimes I was teased, but I survived, and as an adult I really value differences. But I have visions of them coming to me when they are 16 and saying, "Mom, why didn't you tell me to stop wearing my stupid hat?!"

as a teacher within the special ed realm, i can tell you that many of my students have difficulties transitioning from lighter clothing to heavier clothing, and from heavier clothing to lighter clothing.........i suggest while your son is young, that you take control of the situation in a non-invasive, non-threatening manner- ie; " now that the temperature is (fill in the blank with appropriate temperature), it's time to change over your jackets and clothing for lighter/heavier clothing and jackets. once you help me put your things away, we can ...( do preferred activity )

now, having said all that, my son is 16 and will not change into winter gear no matter what we do......even had his school social worker call and ask if we were in need of a new winter jacket for him, because they'd noticed he wasn't wearing one!.....son does not seem to feel the cold as many others do........hubby is the same way. i've given up on the battle ( and, yes, it did become quite a battle in our house.)....now that he's old enough, we've told him that he needs to keep a winter jacket at school ( in case they go out), and that on extremely cold days we request that he wears a jacket. so far, things seem to be going ok

What my mother would do was tell me (in a factual, non-judgmental way) that what I was doing was different than what the other kids did, and that it might make me look weird, and that if I wanted she could help me figure out how to do the normal thing. But the choice was always mine. I think that was exactly the right thing to do. Most of the time I chose to keep being weird - but it was my choice and I knew it, which made the consequences somewhat easier to handle. (I still hated being teased though. I just wasn't willing to pretend to be like everyone else.)

Thanks for your replies. I took the advice about just putting the hat away, and saying that we do not wear our winter clothes in the spring. I thought he was surprisingly calm about it, then I noticed that he is wearing his hood up on his spring jacket all the time. So that explains the calm...he had a back up plan!

And I did mention that it looks different than the other kids, because they would only wear their hoods up if it is raining or very cold. He doesn't care. So I'm leaving it at that. I do think that it is a sensory issue, he wants to have his ears covered.

And I like what your mom did, AngelUndercover, telling you what was socially appropriate in a "factual, non judgemental way", but then leaving it up to you to choose. It gives the best of both worlds...useful information about norms, and the freedom to address his own needs/choose for himself.

Hi,
J my 9 year old AS son, puts his hood up or puts a hat on when ever he is stressed, it's actually been great for me, because I can judge now a little better when things are starting to get to him.
I buy all his jumpers/jackets with hoods now for this very reason, it's a form of escape (IMO any way).

that is so funny, my 4 year old loves to wear a hood, and was crying today and I finally was able to figure out it was because his shirt didn't have a hood! and the sleeves were too short, he kept trying to pull them down!! ! He loves to have a hood more that anything! My oldest will wear his jacket all day long no matter how warm it is, I think the heavier clothing gives him some form of deep pressure and he likes that, just a theory anyway!

Well, it's almost May and I am still essentially wearing what I was in January - t-shirt, slacks, and requisite university-logo "hoodie". Doesn't really matter that the weather has warmed up, though I occasionally take the hoodie off if it's really hot.

I think it's partially not wanting to figure out each morning what to wear. I tend to under-dress and get "aren't you cold?" a lot especially from my mom. Since I'm better at figuring out that I'm too hot than too cold I put on the slacks & hoodie so that at minimum I'm covered up and I can take off later if really needed.

Not that it matters since basically everyone on campus wears the same thing, though most people have ditched the hoodies by now.

I remember lacking common sense of what to wear when I was in 5th grade: As soon as it got too cold for shorts and T-shirt, I would wear sweatpants and a big winter coat. Even though it was hardly Fall. And then I would continue wearing my fall/winter clothes (minus the coat) when it turned to summer up until kids asked "how can you wear sweatpants on a day like this??" So then I would come to school in shorts the next day, even though it was alot colder on that particular day (it was between spring and summer) and a girl would joke about my sense of clothing being all backwards. And then my most common quirk was not wearing a coat in cold weather. I didn't want to bother wearing one unless it was painfully cold out or if I was going to be out for extended periods. 5th grade was also the year I slowly switched from wearing sweatpants to wearing jeans, mostly because of peer pressure + the benefits of having pockets.

Now, I don't wear long sleeved shirts. I wear short sleeved shirts year round, Convertible khakis (bottom leggings on) during fall/winter and unzip the bottom leggings of those khakis for the summer. As far as coats, I have a sweatshirt jacket for fall/winter. Thats about it.

I still reach for my hoodie and it's 90+ in Texas right now. As a 30 yr old, though, I kind of have figured out that ppl look at me weird for it, so I try to leave my hoodie behind.

Both my 8 year old son and I are slow seasonal adjusters too.

I only just this last weekend wore a t-shirt ( with long sleeves though), and a floaty cotton shirt with leggings and sandals, and nothing else for the first time this year. It is always difficult, as if my winter clothing has become a second skin and i'm having to shed. Yes, i like the medium-heavy snugness, coccoon ishness of thicker clothing.

It has to be very warm for me to feel as protected/enfolded by the air. But this weekend was like that, air like a warm blanket. Heavy sunshine. Snug air.

My son just layers up and down most of the year, ( in winter he'll wear as many as 5 layers of t-shirts, fine-woollen and/or sweat shirt/fleece things) around the house, and loves hoods too, like me.

There is a moment when long leggings and long sleeved tops are too warm but he's not too keen on shorts or short sleeved tops. Takes him feeling very hot ( dripping) consciously on one or two occasions to persuade him. And by then the summer is almost over anyway!

It probably is just as well he doesn't go to school, because he doesn't wear the same kind of gear as most boys; no jeans or thick chunky pocketed belted trimmed tagged pleated bulky trousers; no big trainer shoes; no logos and embossed names on tops, etc. .

My eight year old is still wearing his winter boots. I have let him keep them out because it can be muddy from time to time.

I snuck out of the house wearing shorts in the winter whenever I could. I HATE HATE HATE bulky winter clothing, I feel trapped and suffocated and it's hard to move and I want to scream. People are always asking if I am nuts, walking around in no more than a hoodie and Adidas pants in the winter (where it can be 20 degrees as a matter of course for 5 months). Interestingly, I absolutely LOATHE being cold, yet it is preferable to the feeling of heavy winter clothes.

Ah, the joys of having sensory problems.

My dd has a black hoodie that she must wear everywhere, even when it's 80 degrees out. Everything's black. Everything's warm.

I guess I'm different from most posters in this topic in that I go by what I see for the weather forecast online on a daily basis. I check weather.com (the Weather Channel's forecast) at the start of the day and gauage things by what I see with these rules of thumb (all temps are in Fahrenheit, not Celsius for those outside the U.S.):

-Generally, Low 50s (say 50-53) and below indicates a long sleeve shirt, and 54/55 and above indicates a short sleeve shirt.

-Generally, 69 and above means shorts, while anything below 69 means pants or jeans.

-Generally, 36 or below indicates a need of a winter jacket, and 37-49 or so indicates a need of a sweatshirt type lighter jacket. Generally, for temps above this (50s and above) wearing a shirt without a jacket or possibly a very light jacket works. If I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt, I'm highly unlikely to be wearing any jacket unless it's raining and I'm wearing a light rain jacket/windbreaker.

-Generally, I wear long socks when I'm wearing pants/jeans and short socks (that only stretch up halfway as high up my leg as the long socks) when I'm wearing shorts.

-Generally, I wear snow boots in the winter when there's snow or messy precipitation on the ground and sneakers/shoes the rest of the time.

I think having rules of thumb like this can be good for many on the spectrum. (A similarly easy system comes to mind with food dates. If a food item, such as yogurt, has a date that has expired some time ago one should lean heavily toward discarding that item for important safety reasons.)

Sometimes in the spring and fall the weather can be much colder at night than during the day time (or much colder in the morning than the afternoon or evening), so sometimes I have need of checking the hour-by-hour forecast for a rough guesstimate of what it may be like at night in case I go out at night after having been inside for an extended period.

Personally, I much prefer the weather when its more consistent throughout the day as there are times when I go around say carrying a spare short sleeve shirt and have to change in the bathroom when it warms up at mid-day.

Being at a very large state university (Pennsylvania State University) with ~ 43,000 students (Penn State is one of the 10 largest universities in the U.S.), I've seen a huge variance in students' clothing. I see undergrad students here who will still be wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt when it's 31 degrees out. Personally I think they're a bit nutty and liable to catch frost bite, but each to their own.

While I don't follow my rules of thumb for winter inflexibly, I do broadly go by them for the most part.

Scott