How to Fold Your Shirt
September 3, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Learning how to fold laundry—-shirts and towels, for a start—is on Charlie’s IEP goals amid those for reading and counting and speech, et alia. Having “folding laundry” on a 10-year-old self-contained special needs classroom fifth grader’s educational plan smacks of nothing less than “pre-vocational skills”: No, it’s not that we’re thinking “job training not academics” for Charlie’s education.
Charlie seems to enjoy doing things (”chores,” some would call them) around the house, from taking out the garbage to carrying in groceries and putting them away. (He does tend to put a number of food items in the refrigerator that don’t really need to go there, but it is a big help to have everything unloaded. Even more, I never asked Charlie to put away the groceries; he decided to on his own initiative.) He is ten years old and I guess it is never too early for a mother to teach her child to start taking care of his own room and tings. Too, sometimes, when Charlie has been fretful and anxious around the house, and giving him a simple, straightforward task to complete and that he automatically gets praised for has helped him move through the anxiety.
We have to go through the steps of folding a shirt slowly and deliberately with Charlie, so the two-second shirt folding method that is described here may not be for him. There is indee no rush for him to fold a shirt or, indeed, for him to learn, so long as he is learning and working on it, step by fold by step.
Kristina,
As a mom to 2 kids, I would not ever worry about whether self-help skills are vocational. We have had our younger daughter involved in folding laundry, tablesetting, helping with the recycling/garbage, etc. Although there is more structured emphasis now, she has always been involved. (LOL–I wish that my 50+ year old husband had received more training in this stuff from his mother.) All these skills will stand Charlie in good stead.
Yes I’m all in favour of child labour myself [bring back chimney sweeps!] especially when it comes to laundry. We’re still at the ‘dump the laundry out’ stage / roll in the warm laundry stage.
I think any additional chores would have too high a price in the ‘electronic bribery’ department.
Best wishes
As a child, I thought household and yard chores were straight from h3ll, but as a parent I would LOVE for Bobby to help with something – anything! Granted, he’s just turned 4 but that’s old enough to put folded socks in a drawer with direction and dump dog food in the bowl, since he has no physical limitations in those areas. It’s a work in progress since he’s stubborn as the dickens (a genetic trait inherited in a double dose).
And as to whether it’s pre-vocational or not and whether that’s a good goal, domestic skills are always good. I have very few domestic skills myself, but I’m great at laundry
For me, the self-check is always “Would I allow my/make my (theoretical) typical child to learn/do the same thing?” and the answer to most stuff is Yes, so then I know I’m setting the bar just high enough for my son’s demonstrated abilities. We want Bobby to be as functional as possible in all areas of his life, and it’s hard sometimes to remember that. So, I guess I need to wake up even earlier so Bobby can dress himself before school 
I have to laugh when our family is out in public and my “non-typical” child is the best-behaved in the room because we enforce basic politeness and civilized behavior. Bobby understands “no whining”, that we don’t shove, hit or kick and we always say/sign please and thank you, so we expect that behavior. I think our kids’ lives would be easier if more NT kids were held to a similar standard…
Charlie being a careless dresser, it’s pretty much all pants, shirts, socks, and underwear he has to put away—–the putting away the groceries has been something Charlie instigated on his own!
My son is starting to try and put on his socks and put things back when I ask. He can’t fold a shirt yet. He is five.
Last august our beagle died. Hunter was his best friend. we promised him a puppy and let him know that our dog went to help others.
The problem was he saw the dog die. For weeks he was terrified for any of us to go to sleep. Today he saw his puppy asleep. He started to cry and kept picking up the pups ears and going to my husband.
Then my husband asked what was wrong. My son showed him by picking up the dogs ear and crying. My husband told him its ok that the puppy was sleeping and not dead. He was ok. Then my son was ok. What struck me as wonderful was that my son had concern and care for someone else.
I held that with me. Of course we also had a big wonderful moment these past weeks. My husband was able to fullfil a wish. He got to take our son fishing for the first time. Our son caught a fish. We took a picture. Everytime we look at that picture of our son with the fish and his dad. My husband and I cry. It makes us smile because we know how hard we had to work with him to get there.
For us its not a developmental ladder its been a huge mountain.