An aid for independent dressing

By Karen Earith

Bobby is a wonderful, energetic, pleasant 30-year-old woman who lives with her parents. Her diagnoses include mild mental retardation, OCD and epilepsy. Bobby's seizure occurrences increase when she is overheated. Because of her OCD, she worries about choosing weather-appropriate clothing because she knows she gets seizures when she is too hot. Because she is so busy worrying about not overheating, her clothes are frequently mismatched.

Her mother currently tells her what to wear, but Bobby would like to be more independent when choosing her clothing. At this time she does not have a reliable way to determine outside temperature and what clothing is appropriate. She also appears unaware of what clothing goes together.

Occupational therapy was requested to help Bobby choose weather-appropriate clothes in order to help decrease the occurrence of seizures. We were also charged with designing a system that would enable her to choose clothes that matched.

We decided the best solution for weather-appropriate clothing was to design an adapted thermometer. This would be combined with a chart that would list what clothes to wear. A standard coil thermometer lists both Fahrenheit and Celsius temperatures. This is too much information for Bobby to process. We needed to find a coil thermometer that we could open to modify the face. After much searching, we found the Big and Bold indoor/outdoor thermometer by Springfield at Home Depot.

We carefully pried the protective cover off. We use this cover as a template to draw a circle on white card stock. We marked temperature increments as determined by Bobby's mother. Each increment was colored with a contrasting permanent marker. Card stock was then cut and glued into place, covering the numbers. We used "The Ultimate" adhesive by Crafters' Pick because of its all-weather properties.

We snapped the protective cover back into place and mounted the thermometer outside Bobby's bedroom window. We then designed a chart that listed the type of clothing that went with each color segment (i.e. purple = shorts and a t-shirt). This chart was hung on the wall next to the window.

The next project involved helping Bobby choose clothes that went together. We decided to create a labeling system based on the children's clothing line Garanimals®. Garanimals uses animals on the labels to help children know what clothing goes together (i.e. Children would look for a shirt and pants that both had a giraffe on the label).

Bobby's wardrobe was sorted into four coordinating piles. We purchased four contrasting colors of seam binding. We ironed Heat 'n Bond Ultra to the back of the seam binding. The seam binding was then cut into circles and pressed to the labels of the clothing following manufacturer's instructions. Now, if Bobby sees a yellow circle on her shirt and shorts, she knows they go together.

Bobby and her family are very happy with her new level of independence.

Karen Earith, OTR/L, is in private practice in Knoxville, TN. She provides contracted services to the department of MR/DD. She can be reached at BaileyFiberArt@aol.com.