Put on pyjamas

#pyjamas#get changed#evening#bedtime#nightwear

Pyjama fabric feels different against the skin from daytime clothes, looser and softer, and for many children that feeling is what says the evening has started. The pictures below give the change an order that still works when energy has run out.

A girl pulls on a dark blue pyjama top covered in white stars.

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Putting on the pyjama top

A girl pulls on a dark blue pyjama top covered in white stars.

A girl stands in striped pyjama trousers, holding the rest of the pyjamas in her hand.

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Putting on the pyjama trousers

A girl stands in striped pyjama trousers, holding the rest of the pyjamas in her hand.

About this visual support

The fabric does half the work. Pyjamas sit loose where day clothes sat tight, with no buttons or waistbands pressing in, and for many children that difference against the skin is the clearest signal all evening that the day is genuinely finished. It is also a change of clothes that has to happen when the child is at their most tired, which makes it one of the harder moments of the whole day.

Which is why the evening change is not the morning one in reverse, even though the steps look similar. In the evening the sequence needs to be shorter and to end somewhere calm: top off, trousers off, clothes in the basket, pyjama top, pyjama bottoms. One thing worth trying is to put the pyjamas out straight after dinner, visible on the bed. The child then sees in advance that the evening is heading in one direction, and the change becomes the last step of something already under way.

The evening routine can be built as a picture sequence in Routined, with the steps in the same order every night, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.