United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

I would love to figure out a way for Javier to wear jeans!!! Ive tried a bunch of different alterations...my next experiment is to put in side panels of stretchy material like maternity pants. Any ideas or tips???

get a piece of strong elastic that is soft and easy to manage. put a button on one end and a button hole on the other. button the button side onto the jeans. the elastic would be easier to button than the button on the actual jeans. you can make the button hole as big or wide as you want it. or i think you can buy them already made. now the zipper would take a bit more thought. hmmmm i am thinking......

i hope this is what you were asking. how to manage the buttons?
hope this helps.

Makes perfect sense. Will definately try when he's a little older. For right now he doesn't have the patience to deal with buttons at all...so I am trying to make his jeans pull-on style.

Thanks so much!

how old is he? you could buy elastic waisted jeans with fake zipper flaps and button(s) at the top that look like real jeans.

My son is four years old and no where near being able to button/zip. We have the jeans with the elastic waist ans buttons just for looks on them. He has a hard enough time pulling them up though, that many times we just put him in sweats... less fitted. But I wonder if the elastic waist jeans would come in your child's size and then you would eliminate all the extra work for yourself!

Joshua is weak in internal rotation, so he had a heck of a time with jeans and button pants. He couldn't even bring the two sides of the fly together, nevermind manipulate a button once he got there! So when he graduated from elastic waist pants, I bought him a bunch of jeans at JC Penney which had a false button and hole on them, but really it was a hook and slider which held the fly together. I also bought only the stretchy waist ones, so they presented minimum resistance to getting the two together in the middle. This gave him lots of practice, he only needed to figure out how to get the two sides together and then he could just let them slide together. Once he had the "bring them together" part down, he was gradually able to add in doing the button, but he was able to do buttons on shirts long before he was able to do jeans buttons.

Kate

i dont know how this would work for a child, but after i thought about it for a while, this makes some sense to me. just simply hand him a pair of jeans and let him practice buttoning them. once he gets comfortable with that, get a round quart or gallon jug, putting the jeans around it, and let him practice with a bit of tension. jeans buttons are very hard to begin with. if it is comfortable for him to button them, then maybe it would not be such a big issue for him once he started to wear them....... dont know if this makes sense to you or not, but it is an idea.....

Joyce,
That makes alot of sense. That's somewhat what I did to learn how to do buttons on jackets and coats as in my childhood there were NO jeans for girls.."peddlepushers" shorts and dresses (wore shorts underneath) ...LOL I am OLD...
Huggz all around,
Gramma Carolyn J
LOBPI/73

Get a button hook. My son used one when he was in grade school. We were able to order some through a Physical Therapists magazine/booklet that sold such things. I forget the name of the publication, sorry. It looked like the handle on one of those foam paint brushes you get at Home Depot, with a round hook on the end, like a fat paperclip shaped like a circle. He was so happy to have it, as Jeans were so frustrating for him. He is 12 now, and does quite well without the button hook. His right hand would loop it through the button hole to go around the big metal button and then pull it through the button hole.

This is how I do it : I pull one handed the jeans half way up, then I put my bpi fingers in the belt loop to help pull up the rest of the way . With my hand still in the belt loop, I zip my jeans and button them one handed. I use to love wearing the button fly levis in the 70's.
It takes some practice ,but I know he will be able to do it. Hope this helps....