Does Your 4-Year-old Have Unfettered Access to Your Closet?

My kids don't have access to my closet, ever, nor are they allowed in my bedroom unless I'm in there and invite them in or it's at night and they need something. It's the only space in the house where we have a "no kids" rule and we like it that way.

Completely agree with Victoria! My room and my closet are OFF LIMITS! She has dress-up clothes galore and that's annoying enough to keep picked up. All those little rings and mardi-gras beads....

Yes, make your closet off limits. And her clothes too (for changing throughout the day). Then, buy her a "dress up trunk" (or a basket or hamper or whatever works for you) and fill it with JUST dress up stuff. Let her dress up to her heart's content, then when she is done, (she can even do it) just scoop it all up and toss it back in the trunk (hamper/bin/whatever). Done.
No spending hours re-hanging clean clothes and searching for the matching shoe.
Good luck and take some pictures of her in her fav outfits. :)

ETA: I forgot to address the question of "when does this stage pass?".... for some parents--never. I know women whose daughters still routinely raid their things and borrow without asking. That's one reason why it is far better to restrict her access to your closet NOW. It isn't cute when they are 16 and feel like what is yours is theirs for the taking. New sunglasses? oops. borrowed and lost. Blow dryer? go hunt it down if you need to use it, hers broke so she took yours. Earrings? borrowed and somewhere in the bottom of daughter's jewelry box now. Phone? Hers died so she grabbed yours.

We have never allowed either of our children to feel like they have free access to personal things of ours (the closet, my purse, his wallet, car keys, etc). Doesn't mean they can never use them or go in them, just that they need to ASK for PERMISSION first. Besides, the closet is where I hide their Christmas presents. It is SO much easier if they aren't allowed to just go in there any time they want... lol.

Are you serious? You give a 4 year old open access to your closet and complain that she leaves it a mess?

No. My room is "by permission only" for all the kids.

If your DD likes dress up, give her appropriate items in her own little wardrobe or bin that she can play with - and put back when she's done. I think that would help on both fronts. Also, at 4 she should definitely be picking up more after herself. Make her pick up one thing before she goes on to the next or before you leave or have a meal. Teach her now or she'll leave a trail of disaster her whole life.

Look, you either want her in your closet and are okay with tracking your own belongings down, or.....
your closet is a no-no.
Get her her own dress up stuff. Keep it in a hall closet or some other area so it's not considered her "regular" stuff either.
That might make it more fun for her.

My daughter changed clothes all the time. It wasn't a problem when it was her stuff because she had to put back anything she dragged out.
My kids loved my closet too, but they couldn't just yank down anything off the hangers that they wanted at will. They were not their things to do that with.
Mom's closet can be fun, but apparently it's not fun for you so you just have to set some limits.

You are either okay with your clothes being dragged out or you aren't.
It's only a "phase" if you find a way to change it.
Otherwise, kids will do what they are used to being allowed doing.

Pretty simple.

Best wishes.

Our whole bedroom and bathroom are off-limits, so that certainly applies to the closet too (we have our own master bathroom and you have to go through it to get to the closet). So basically yes, we have ground rules - this is our space, and you are to respect it and not mess around in it. She's got her own bedroom and the rest of the house to play in. She is usually pretty good about not whipping stuff out but on the rare occasion that she's gotten it into her head to take out all her clothes out of her drawers and scatter them all over her room, I make her pick them all up and clean it up herself while I supervise. I will help some, but she has to do the bulk of the work herself. It's helped her decide that whatever fun she had making a mess is really not worth it. She's not allowed to rifle through my purse or touch any of our personal stuff. She has to ask our permission to play games on our phones. Time to start putting your foot down Mama!

My daughter is now 7. At age 4, my closet was (still is) off limits. She had her own dress up bin plastic tote that was stored in her closet and a shoe rack on the back of her door to hold her own dress shoes. Alot of her stuff has been purchased at GoodWill and thrift stores...........
Now that she is 7.5, she has some dress up stuff hung in her closet but most of it is either in the 'bin' or on hooks in her room.

maybe take her to the good will or a thrift store and pick out fun new dresses hats and shoes :). my daughter has never made an effort to dress up in my clothes.

My closet is off limits. I believe it teaches respect. It's funny that after I switched bedrooms with the kids and they got the walk in closet, it still didn't become a play area for them because they were so used to it being off limits. I think you will either have to make it off limits or put your clothes somewhere else-- closet, wardrobe, or clothing rack. It does sound like an awesome play space.

This is weird to me but only because my bedroom has ALWAYS been off limits to my kids. Its mine and my husbands space, our stuff and NOT a playroom. Our kids are 15, 12 and 9 and honestly, they are NEVER in our room for any reason. That being said, I'm sure others have said it, but get a box with outfits in it for her to play with. Good luck!

Our daughter had to ask permission to go into our room. So I was in there with her if she wanted anything from my closet.

Children having limits, and learning how to respect the belongings of others is not as you put it hard *** it's part of teaching and training respect and boundaries, but all house holds are different with different rules, your may come back to bite you in the but latter. J.

Hi jane-

My girls had access to my closet (and my 'jewels') when they were little...and they were very good about putting things away...

BUT, since their teens...seems they 'go in' when I am not around...and shoes...scarves...and jewelry seem to go 'missing' for a while...lol

I now make them ask for an 'extended loan' of an item so I am not frantically searching the depths of my closet.

Truly though, it was simpler for me when they were younger!

Enjoy!!
Michele/cat

No they don't, I have to have my private space, even if it is just my closet, especially if they were to make a mess in there. We are now having them ask permission to come into our room. Why don't you let her take a few of your rarely worn shoes and old dresses and put them in a chest or box so she can play dress up.

My boys (4 and 6 years old) are the same way though, they change outfits like 3 times a day and their clothes are always strewn everywhere. I can spend hours putting their clothes away, and they will dump out drawers and such in less than 5 minutes.... it is getting very overwhelming yo deal with. My solution? I'm bagging up half their clothes and donating them or putting them on craigslist/ebay.

to answer the other part of your question..... my daughter is 11 1/2 and would STILL change clothes into a completely new outfit every 15 minutes if I hadn't really managed this behavior intensely from the beginning.
In addition, within the 15 minutes where she has decided on one outfit, she would be accessorizing with shoes, jewelry, arm warmers, headbands etc. before she changed again.

So.... I'd like to know when that naturally ends as well!!!!!!

However, NO I do NOT pick up her messes. EVER. She made the mess, she cleans it up. We figure that into the amount of free time she has. It's called teaching self-accountability and if you just allow your daughter to go through life like a tornado expecting others to clean up behind her you aren't doing her a favor.

The boundaries I set for her were the following:

1. If she's in her room having "free time" it has to be when all her other "stuff" is done - ie homework (coming for you in a couple years), practice piano, her stuff picked up from around the house.

2. About 20 minutes before her free time ends, I go in and survey. Then I tell her she has x amt of time left before she needs to start cleaning up.

3. If we have to leave somewhere at a specified time, that is the time we leave.... regardless of whether she is "happy" with what she has on or not - or if she decides at the last minute that she wants to wear something else. This took some coaching (and you have to give warnings about how much time before we leave etc). I kept some really funky clothes in my car so that she would be weather appropriate (ie - a big oversized sweatshirt coat and funky shoes with unmatched laces). Since she found out the hard way that I was serious and that she really was going to have to leave the house, she did a better job making decisions and getting ready in a timely manner.

4. Even when she was little, SHE cleaned up DAILY - or before she changed activities (but I helped her - which means I actually DID it, but she had to be right there and I gave her simple commands - pick up that dress and put it on the hanger, now hang it on the bar. nope, so the buttons are on the left. yep that's right, now pick up the blue shirt and put that on a hanger.....)

5. I only wash clothes that are actually DIRTY and/or that have been worn for at least 1/2 a day. If she tried it on and 30 min later decided not to wear it, she hangs it back up. now that she is older, she pretty much does her own laundry - but we still sort it together so that I can make sure she isn't just re-washing stuff that fell off the hanger.

6. My clothes are not play clothes. I wear them to work and they cost significantly more money than I am willing to just replace on a whim if she trips or whatever and they rip. I have "GIVEN" her some of my old clothes when I was going to get rid of them, but NEVER would she be able to put on my work clothes.

7. She is allowed to wear my old t-shirts around the house, but just like I don't go get in her drawers in her room, she doesn't go get in my drawers in my room. We are a very open family, but I believe wholeheartedly in personal space and boundaries. So, my room is not off-limits, per say but she can't just go spend time in there.

If you have a great play space that is your closet, I would maybe consider doing something else with your clothes and turning this great area into her play space. you can get wardrobes pretty cheap that look nice in the room and have hanging bars. That way she doesn't have access to your things, but can still feel like she can go in that great space.

Also at 4 my daughter was still fairly heavily supervised. There wasn't time for her to make that much of a mess, even in the 10 minutes I might leave her in a room unsupervised. I did most of "my" activities after she was in bed, and so the entire time she was up and active I was involved and either playing with her, she was helping me, or we were doing an activity together.

Now that she's older she has learned how to make better decisions and how to have more impulse control, so she can be in her room unsupervised for longer amounts of time.

Just my $0.02

Could you have just one section that is hers for "dress up". Let her play in there but she has to not take down anything not in the section. Give her one space about a foot across that she is allowed to play with those clothes. Then the mess is less at least. Your closet sounds like a fun fort for kids! But I think it is a bit crazy to let her make a mess of so many clothes every day, so you should reign her in!

this one ain't rocket science. give her more dress-up options of her own, and keep her out of your closet. if your closet space is really so intriguing that you don't want to keep them out, make it a no-touch play area.
you really can't expect her to play at will in there and then complain about the mess.
khairete
S.

Our room is set up weird, its not the typical square. It has the closet and the chiminey that is in there plus there is a door on two sides of the room... and being old there is only one plug in. Anyways... our bed has to block our closet door if we want to use the doors or the plug in. So our closet is only for storage.

But... upstairs is the only other closet in the house. We use to have our stuff in there but it became thier extra toy area because they were always wearing my things. I left some of the things that aren't important or bearly ever worn in there for them to play with and I moved the rest of it down to our room. Shoes are now in a tote and the clothes are hung up on our exposed clothes rack. I never had a problem with them playing with them, I more moved most of it because I got tired of the mess :)

Would it be possible to make that her play space, but keep your stuff on one side that she can't touch and on the other stuff she can?

I might add also.. our room is very public to everyone! We have a tv in here that we watch. The computer is also in here. The little ones have to go threw our room to get to thier room. The tv in the living room usually has the kids choice that they want to watch and the game systems on. So the kids who want to watch what we are watching gather in our bedroom with us. On a normal night its my husband and the two little ones curled up in his chair and me and atleast one of the older boys on our bed. The oldest watching something in the living room or playing a game. But the kids know my/ husbands things are off limits. The can come in to our anytime they want before 9pm ( after 9 its off limits, plus they should be in bed). They cannot touch anything in our room that is ours.

Ha!
No, my 3 year hasn't, yet.
She is not into that, she is all about animals.
BUT, my 13 year old has, she doesn't leave me a mess. She either has ask me to take something OR say ewww, when I offer something I think is cool,
The shoes is a whole different story, she uses my shoes, she leaves them all over the house and to top it all, she leaves them stinky!
Ugg! I guess is all my fault because it was MY idea to not "waist" on shoes since we both are the same size, WRONG IDEA!