Dad taking a bath with young child

[Demjay]

Please help:
would you consider it normal for a dad to share a bath with his children : say 3-5 years? If you had other concerns , would this be a red flag , or is this just totally ordinary / acceptable dad behaviour?

This is the conundrum. Nothing specific that I could point to with the children (that is known to me). There is definitely a sense of an inappropriate lack of boundaries with the kids- certainly emotionally.

The abuse of (several) intimate partners, and stalking/ harassment behaviour is known/ documented, and questions have been raised about sexual issues by two partners (but not related to kids). He also has mental health and substance abuse issues. I’m just worried if the kids are safe.

Anyway thanks for your thoughts everyone: as I say, I have no specific evidence of a risk to the kids particularly , just a general gut level concern. I was wondering if the bath thing might be an objective flag , but it seems not and that that is totally normal behaviour x

It wouldn’t hurt to contact the NSPCC to talk through your concerns - you could have an anonymous conversation and work through what you have noticed with the call handler, it wouldn’t be you necessarily reporting anything, but you’d be talking to people who know what to recognise in these situations. As said before, you clearly feel there is more to this situation and it isn’t about bathing

Thank you, this is a good suggestion x

I don't think that people who have abused, harassed, and stalked partners should be allowed to spend time with their own children, full stop. (The courts disagree with me on this, of course.)

However, bathing arrangements are of no particular concern.

The other collateral markers you might look out for is how the children are around him in general .. anxious, avoidant or warm and relaxed. Does the mum have concerns herself ? It is all about the context and the bath / bed sharing in isolation may not be an issue but any sense that the children are not comfortable with it, is. Assuming it is all completely ok.. and nothing to worry about .. he might wanted to think twice as the childrens nursery teachers may be less considered and report confused accounts from children - police / social service responses are driven by procedure and there is no room from nuance

What’s ridiculous is your lack of respect for another family’s choices. Nothing wrong with modesty.

Unless the other concerns are that he is on the sex offender register then I think it's normal

Being a massive prude, I wouldn[t necessarily say it was normal, but I also wouldnt jump on the pedophile bandwagon.
And for me it would be equally as bad if it was mom or dad.
However, this is probably due to my upbringing. We were a very stoic household, not many emotions or PDA, and defintely very little or no nudity.
So that has shaped me.

So I probably wouldnt do it myself. However... is it really wrong? Probably not.
Also, if someone is an abuser, there are plenty of other opportunities to abuse a child, which are not the shower/bath.

Ours all shared baths/showers with us (both DH and I) as it was more streamlined than doing it separately once they could sit properly/stand. We did stop it, not because it was inappropriate but because with each additional the bath/shower got too crammed and you couldn’t move without fear of stepping/knocking over the little blighters🤣.

DH would have done this more frequently than myself as he was more available with them generally (we shared SAHP duties by working opposite days/shifts). There is no issue with this and wearing swimmers seems ridiculous.

In addition, most of ours seemed to migrate into our bed frequently, again too many and capacity issues and DH and I would then go sleep in one of their empty beds, someone may follow and it was musical beds for years with DH and I sleeping desperately with various kids. We had one long term we who stopped when they were 15yo and over 6’. That was not abuse or a flag, no one was sexually abusing kids because of sharing beds.

Normally- not a red flag.
This situation is worrying you for a reason. I would also recommend calling nspcc.

As for nudity, we are still all nuddies. Most of us do the nuddy run from bathroom to bedroom to get changed - who can be bothered bringing a wet towel back to the bathroom? However, if we have visitors everyone then takes their clothes with them and gets dressed in the bathroom before exiting. Most of mine, now adults, still don’t close the bathroom door when showering, and neither do DH or I. Again, if visitors are present, everyone shuts the door. That’s appropriate boundaries.

I think it is fine up until the child is old enough to bathe, dress, and not drown themselves and then it's weird.

The entire point is to help people who cannot help themselves.

If a dad is bathing with a perfectly healthy typical 7yo+ child I would calling cps.

That massively changes things. Why on earth didn't you start with that??? Of course that would be concerning!!!

OK, this is weird to me, but everyone is different and it doesn't matter 🙂

It's not something my parents did with me, or I did with my kids.

I wouldn't necessarily be concerned but I don't see it as very practical.

If there are other concerns then I would want to explore those and speak to someone about them.

If there are additional concerns, then it's absolutely a red flag. I would think this regardless of it being mother or father.

In my house, it's a non issue. Both children have bathed with both myself and my husband. My 7 year old wouldn't now, but my 5 year old would given half the chance. As it goes, we all shower anyway and very rarely bath. Nudity isn't a secret in our house either. It wouldn't even cross our minds that there is an issue.
Both kids sometimes end up in our bed in the middle of the night if they're poorly or have woken up scared. If it's myself and DH or either of us alone. As adults, we don't have to sleep alone so why should we except a child to sleep alone when they're scared or poorly. Again, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind that it could be untoward.

Horses for courses.

Back in the day, my own dad wouldn't have done this. Nor my mother for that matter. They wouldn't have been comfortable with their bits out.
I don't think my ex husband ever did it with our daughters either.
I certainly wouldn't raise an eyebrow at it. My general feeling is that it's fine for their biological dad, but never ok with a stepfather.

In the absence of other concerns of course it's normal providing the children are comfortable.

DS used to love jumping into a bubble bath with me it was great fun and is totally normal as it was with his dad too!

Totally normal in our house. As soon as DS (age 3) hears the bath running he’s stripping off as quickly as he can 😂 he loves the bath - he’s been known to wake from a sleep if he hears the bath. Bloody HATES the shower though so thankfully we do get a wash on our own, sometimes he’ll pop his head in if he comes in to pee to shout ‘shower!!!’ As loud and as aggressively as he can before running off laughing. I think it’s normal.

Although our lovely DC just swings the bathroom door open with some sort of announcement, if I’m in the loo or the bath. I think it’s innocent at that age, I can’t imagine teenage DS hijacking my bath or coming in to tell me his socks are wet as an adult. He’ll grow out of it.

Of course if there is any other concerns things would be different.

If you would read a little bit, even just a little, you’d see I was talking about a statistic.

if you’d read a little more (oh my god, I know it’s so much to ask), you’d find that I was talking about this utterly puerile habit people have of just flipping genders, like they’re bringing in the MASSIVE BRAINS. oh oh my goodness, we had all better kneel down, someone has brought in the old “if this were reversed” fucking chestnut as If they’re the first one who said it.

you okay? Maybe read a bit more. It’s good for you.

We never jumped in the bath with them but often they would shower with DH or I. Saves time. I guess we stopped doing that when they started school or thereabouts? But they walk in on us in the shower all the time!

I don’t think a parent being in the bath with their baby, toddler or preschooler is odd.

My dd always wanted to get in the bath with me and her dad. He used to moan about it if he was getting ready to go out to play pool. She used to lie on the floor outside the bathroom with her hair under the door crying until he gave in.😂😂😂

I’m my view, even the additional information doesn’t stop this being normal. Sure, he sounds like a terrible person, but none of that is an indication that he is abusing his children by doing a (based on responses here), a completely normal action.