I had never heard of adaptive clothing before the moment it became a requirement for us. That is a hard place to be. Looking back it’s so wild to see how I went from not knowing about adaptive clothing for older kids, to sitting here sharing how we figured it out.

Why we needed adaptive clothing

I didn’t know anything had changed until the nursery director pulled me aside one Sunday morning.  “We need you to start sending your daughter to nursery in a onesie going forward,” she said.

Not what I was expecting. I blinked, confused. “She managed to undress herself three times this morning,” she explained.

Oh.

I smiled and thanked her for letting me know.

Everything was fine.

But when I got back in the car, it hit me. She wasn’t a toddler anymore, she was six. The nursery was doing their best to accommodate her needs. But none of the clothes we had actually worked for her anymore.

Not in the ways that mattered. And I didn’t have a clue what to try next.

Trying To Figure it Out

I didn’t know what to search for. I didn’t even know what to call it. I remember searching “how to stop your kid from taking off their diaper.” And that’s where I started to see a few blogs talking about adaptive clothing.

It was things like big T-shirts with snaps at the bottom, basically a onesie but bigger. I knew right away that wasn’t going to work for us. She would still be able to access her diaper. But it at least gave me a place to start.

I wouldn’t have called it a journey back then. It felt more like survival. But looking back? That’s where it started. What would become our version of adaptive clothing.

What i noticed in the store

I was about to head to checkout when I saw a rack of leotards off to the side of the girls section. And it’s funny, because I had walked past that section of Walmart so many times and never gave it a second thought.

That day, I stopped. What if?

I remember standing there and calling my husband like, “Hey…before I spend twenty dollars on a leotard, am I crazy? Do you think this would even work?”

Because my daughter doesn’t walk, I never had a reason to look at them before. I took a chance, and I’m glad I did.

We used leotards as our go-to adaptive clothing for a solid year or two. Until our daughter slowly began to realize… “wait a minute, I can take this off. “

As her awareness grew, she started to reach and remove her diaper. I knew it was just curiosity and instinct. But we needed something that made diaper access harder.

The search continues

We tried rompers and layering overalls over the leotards , and for a while… it worked. Long enough for us to think we had found the solution and to let our guard down.

Then one morning, we woke up to her in the same outfit, minus the diaper.

No struggle , no sound, just a diaper on one side of the crib and her on the other. And just like that, we were back to troubleshooting.

Putting the pieces together

We finally started noticing a pattern.

Every time our daughter managed to get her diaper off, she was wearing something soft. If the fabric could be bunched , tugged, or wiggled in any way, it was over.

The only thing that consistently slowed her down was Denim.

Overalls were firm, but the opening gap gave too much access. Rompers were lightweight and comfortable, but too soft and easy to wiggle a diaper out of.

I kept coming back to the same thought.

Dang…Jeans and a T-shirt would work if I could figure out how to make them stay put like a one piece.

What we still use today

When I started thinking it through, I knew I needed some denim on the bottom and soft cotton on top.

I considered making something from scratch, but at that point, it felt like too much. So I went simpler.

I remember asking my husband: “What if I just sewed a t-shirt and a pair of jeans together?” He told me to go for it, so I grabbed the sewing machine.

That’s what we’ve been using ever since.

It’s simple, they hold up and most importantly, they actually work. I’ve made dozens of these outfits over the years, adjusting as she’s grown. But the idea has stayed the same.

If want to see exactly how I make them, I’ve put together a full step-by-step tutorial here. You can also watch my adaptive clothing series over on tiktok, here.

What started as something I was just trying to figure out is now something I don’t have to think about anymore.

If you ever find yourself in that same “what do I even do” moment. Maybe this gives you a place to start.