Fashion toddler

It's amazing when your child does something you hear about other children doing.

Children picking out their own clothes is a big one, apparently. At the parenting workshop, we talked about it frequently. It's a framework for power struggles and for self-sovereignty. It's not just a girl thing - boys do it too. Boys dress as ridiculously as girls do if you leave them to their own choices.

AwesomeCloud's sense of style does not favor stripes, solids, or licensed characters. He prefers cars and generic animals. Lions are good. Anything that roars, or vrooms, gets chosen.

Fortunately he doesn't care which shorts he wears, so I can still dress him to match. Daddy should also try to dress him to match, whenever possible. Two of his pairs of shorts are brown, and I'm sorry about that - but any shirt that's not a primary color looks generally passable with brown shorts.

But anyway.

When he reaches these little trivial milestones, people will sometimes stare blankly at me or pat me on the shoulder and say, "They all do that."

Yes. But. When your child is reasonably intelligent but has universal delays, all milestones come a little bit late, and I feel relieved when he hits them. In this case, I'm glad to learn that he pays attention to small details like the picture on his shirt. Some very intelligent kids never go through this stage, never care what their clothes look like, and that's fine. I'm not worried about them.

I am, however, glad that my child, who has struggled to learn about his world and himself and has lagged developmentally all his life, is taking the time to master these little optional skills.

It's good to be familiar with your wardrobe. It's not terrible to be apathetic to your wardrobe, but if he's showing interest at age 2.5, then it's less likely he'll be mismatching his clothes at age 25.

Whether he ever learns to iron... well... I hate to iron and I avoid it when I can, so that may be a lost cause.