to be shocked at how many parents don't....

[formerbabe]

bath their children every day!

Following on from the thread about a poster not changing her children into pyjamas, I was surprised reading the responses how many people say they only bath their kids a couple of times a week.

I bath mine every night before bed and always have done, bar illness or something catastrophic happening in my day. On the rare occasion they have had to miss their bath, I have done a quick wipe down with a flannel, but they never seem clean after it. My kids seem to get filthy during the day, mud/food etc.

I know those kids who have excema cannot always have a bath everyday, but for anyone else it just seems like pure laziness to me.

Bathed PFB every day. PSB arrived and all that went out the window

Foruntately kids have learned the necessary survival skills to overcome my parenting deficits. They can wipe their own arses clean, wash their sticky hands and faces and use their weekly school swimming as an opportunity to bathe. I bathe them on a Saturday morning and/or Sunday evening depending on how grimy the weekend has made them as they live feral in the garden playing with fire, eating mud and training the dog. I rather like it when they come in smelling of wood smoke actually. I don't even make them wash their hands before they eat unless they are at least 2 whole skin tones darker than nature made them. Dirt and grime are not unnatural and you are not a bad parent if you do not hose down the kids every day. Stop putting yourself under so much pressure and for goodness sake stop considering people who chose to parent differently from you to be wrong, inferior or bad parents.

OP if this is not a wind up, I suggest you see a therapist before your OCD and fear of dirt makes your overly-clean children as paranoid as you are.

If you were very concerned about cleanliness and smell and had made this thread about showering, you may have had a point, albeit a small one. However, as Nennypops says, what is so clean about sitting in your own sweat and discarded skin cells and dirt? Some cultures find this repulsive.

On embarrassing bodies they took swabs from rugby players who all showered and found fecal bacteria in their armpits I doubt baths would be any different.

If its ok for kids who have eczema not to bath every day, why is it not ok for kids who don't have eczema to not bath every day?

Are you saying kids with eczema are horrible and smelly? They are not because.......small kids don't need to bath every day!

Oh well done OP for being such a brilliant parent, here have a medal.

YABU. Unless they're particularly grubby/covered in sun cream etc, why do they need to bathe every day? Mine have less baths now than when they were little - 2/3 times a week possibly which is fine IMO (inc post-swimming shower/hairwash). I'm sure we had a Sunday night bath and that was it when I was a kid - we all managed to survive to adulthood!

Asked my retired primary teacher mother if 70's classes were more smelly than today as we all only had a Sunday night back-to-school bath.

She says no. Kids were clean; and parents less full of shit too :)

Kids were clean; and parents less full of shit too

Mine are bathed nightly , I don't understand it either. They get so sticky!

What on earth are everybody's kids doing to get so much dirt under their clothes so it needs bathing to remove it? Or what are they wearing to get so sticky?

Did you collect your medal OP?

I bath mine twice a week. They don't stink or look unwashed. I also use no soap on them, just water.

Does anyone know where I can buy wooden spoons for all the parents who don't bath their kids daily (I also ask WTF are people doing to get their kids filthy every single day?!)? After all us dunces need a prize too if the OP is getting a medal

One of my four dc just had a bath. It was for fun not for clean and she didn't wash her hair... I also have another child here who has been sleeping over, he's 8 and I haven't attempted to clean him at all - should I?

I'm now confused about what that means for the quality of my parenting...

I do bath mine every single day, I also wash their hair every day (stone me for getting rid of natural oils!) - they often do need it, because they are usually covered in paint and mud. And my little one still rubs food in her hair.

But I'm not shocked that people don't, I think it's each to their own. I'm a bit surprised by twice a week though, surprised that even young kiddies don't smell, or at least feel manky.

Once DD was out of nappies I didn't bath daily. A wash daily yes, but not always a bath. She didn't really get dirty or sweaty so no real need. Every day or so was enough. Better for their skin isn't it too?

Now she is a lot older she showers daily.

A message to those who launder clothes/sheets/towels after every use
to those who shower / bath every day even though in non tropical areas one is not sweaty or dirty

When the aquifers run dry
when the river pollution becomes intolerable

you'd better hope that your children and grandchildren will EVER EVER forgive you for your profligacy with the earth's resources

we are already loading our children with the government debt we cannot face paying off

and those of you with the laundry addiction are handing them a resource depleted world as well

Nice one.

Selfish does not even come close.

I haven't read the thread but have stopped bathing the children routinely every day when I realised that vitamin D washes off (worth googling if your DC have been indoors or in as little sun as ours).

vitamin D apparently can take up to 48 to be fully absorbed so I now delay bath time on the days they've been in the sun!

I agree with talkinpeace

I'm not sure when I am meant to fit in this bath every day. Dd is picked up from the childminder at 6, has her dinner and is in bed by half 6, 3 days a week. No time for a bath. She has a wipe with a flannel when she gets changed for bed.

Seriously, why to we insist on judging each other incessantly on this stuff? All it does is make other women feel crap about things that don't matter.

"vitamin D apparently can take up to 48 to be fully absorbed so I now delay bath time on the days they've been in the sun!"

This sounds wrong to me. Vitamin D isn't literally in sunlight - it's just that the energy in UV-B rays is used in a chemical reaction inside the skin that converts a pro-vitamin (a vitamin D precursor) into vitamin D. So it's not like all the vitamin D from the sun is sitting on the surface of your skin waiting to be absorbed and it'll get washed off in the bath.

well moving the beauty of this thread is that both the washers and the non washers get to feel morally superior. It's win win

yeah, but those of us who give a shit about the future of the planet are RIGHT

I think it's a cultural thing. I am not British so I am used to both adults and children having a bath or shower at least once a day.

Ummmm, you definitely can't wash Vitamin D off the surface of your skin. Our bodies make Vit D from sunlight, it isn't beamed down to us!

I soak mine in bleach twice a day. Anything less is obviously neglect. People who only wash once a day make me physically vomit, I can smell them from miles away.