AIBU to think that bathing your kids once a week is not 'neglect'.

[ThisWillBeInteresting01]

This is spurred on by another threat about someone struggling to keep their house clean. They mentioned that their kids are bathed once a week. This caused a lot of negativity amongst posters, with some comments calling bathing your kids once a week 'neglect'. This surprised me!!

My DC is 4 and has on average 2 baths a week (and yes, sometimes that means 1 a week). It has never been part of our bedtime routine - it gets them het up rather than calming them down. Their hair is washed once a week in term time after swimming class (v long hair as per DC's request, which takes an age to wash and dry). On holidays we once went 3 weeks without washing their hair. Hair was not smelly and looked lovely throughout.
My DC is not smelly, not dirty and most definitely not neglected! They have clean clothes, tidy brushed hair, are very popular at school, and have a generally nice life. (They also have a miraculous ability to somehow stay clean even when eating bowls of bolognaise and poking around in the dirt at school, which is helpful 🙏. Obviously if/when they do actually get covered in mud I wash them!).

I did some poking around and the American Academy of Dermatology say that children below pre-teens do not need more than 1-2 baths a week as long as they're not actively dirty/smelly.
https://www.aad.org/public/everyday-care/skin-care-basics/care/child-bathing

So is it really that bad not to bathe your children very often?

YABU - Children are dirty and sticky, more washing please!

YANBU - As long as they're not stinking up the bus then it's fine.

There are aways posters insistent they can tell if someone has bathed or showered last night or this morning
I've no idea how they know - are they literally handing out surveys to everyone they meet/work with....? because its not something that has ever come up in conversation IRL in my experience.

No, but they have eyes and noses; they can see and smell. They know who has bathed and showered, and who hasn’t.

No, but they have eyes and noses; they can see and smell. They know who has bathed and showered, and who hasn’t.

Do they fuck. They just assume, and are often wrong. Some people smell more than others. I know people who reek by lunchtime,despite showering in the morning and smelling perfectly ok when they arrive at work and I also know people that don't shower for 2/3 days even in the summer that don't smell.

Exactly! If they cba with a 5mins shower I just cannot imagine them stripping their kids down and giving them a good scrub all over with a smelly flannel. Why bother just shove them in the shower it's easier and quicker!

You can tell by looking at someone when they last had a bath....??

This is a new level of MN judgment!

I didn't know before I joined MN that I might be judged for going out with wet hair....on the plus side hopefully that's a tick in the box they can see I had a shower a few hours ago!

No, no one is saying you can pinpoint to the last minute when someone last bathed or showered, but, of course, you can tell who has good and poor hygiene.

My teen is a girl and she washes daily. Face, Arm pits and bits. And wears deodorant. She showers mid week after PE and again at the end of the week, ready for school. I assure you, she does not smell as I make sure of this. My younger child also washes daily.

I used to be a secondary teacher. Always had to open the windows when y7 8 or 9 were in.

Lots were not washing😷

'My teen is a girl and she washes daily. Face, Arm pits and bits. And wears deodorant. She showers mid week after PE and again at the end of the week, ready for school. I assure you, she does not smell as I make sure of this. My younger child also washes daily.'

Your teen should be showering every day as should your younger dc. Please teach them basic hygiene.

That's your opinion.

I agree with them. Showering is as quick as washing. And cleaner.

It is my opinion and it should be yours. I'm not a frantic daily towel washer but daily showering should not be negotiable. Hands face and 'bits' is so utterly inadequate.

And it should be yours 🤣

I grew up with an outdoor toilet. But I am not insisting on that now.

It's really odd to me thar people are still sponging their "bits and pits" with flannels, then washing the flannels, then drying them... when they could just shower. Unless for cost or disability reasons.

You can tell by looking at someone when they last had a bath....??

You can’t tell by looking at them of course you can’t. Nor can you tell when they last had a bath. But I promise you when people bathe or shower once a week you can tell.

Even if they don’t actually smell of BO or feet there is a general mustiness about people who don’t wash regularly which gets into their clothes and it’s noticeable.

My best (male) friend from my late teens to mid 20s was an infrequent showerer due to being a hardcore environmentalist and while he rarely smelled of BO there was just this all encompassing fug about him and his clothes and belongings. He was insistent that no one needed to bathe more than once a week and it was all a conspiracy cooked up by the cosmetic industry but everyone noticed it. I loved him to bits and sometimes gently prodded him on it but he was convinced it was all in people’s heads. But everyone noticed it.

Why would you put yourself or your kids through that if you don’t need to? If you were completely skint and every extra bit of electricity was a trade-off against food it would be one thing but usually it’s not, it’s just people being stubborn about it.

I just don’t get why they don’t just take advantage of the fact that getting clean is really cheap and easy. Why deliberately alienate people?

I don't even believe all these people waving flannels around. To properly use a flannel you need one for your nether regions and one for the rest of you, so unless you have two flannels per person so 8 for a family of four all of which would need washing each week, which I don't believe most do, I'm highly doubtful that many people are doing that. Or perhaps they are just splashing water about, which in fairness is what I do if I have a strip wash and it gets all over the floor.

The reason most people shower now is that we have immediate hot running water, in the 70s, we had to put the immersion on, wait and the water would run out quickly- we also only put it on once a week, using a kettle for washing the rest of the time.

It's so important to establish clean habits early on because then when they get near puberty, it's already a routine.

As for people smelling, I just went into a pharmacy today and smelt someone come in behind me, before I even saw them, I felt huge empathy for the person who was a young teen boy, but I'm not nose-blind. I know other teenagers whose clothes are musty, again, not their fault, their household doesn't wash and dry clothes properly and the smell won't come out. This is not in that case due to poverty, although I'm sure it is for some.

How did he manage to go on a beach holiday and not get his clothes even slightly grubby??.they can't have possibly been clean after 2 weeks of constant wearing and playing with c.

Well, you could use 1 flannel
.. wash the genitals and arse last.

YABU. It doesn’t need to be every day (unless v dirty nappy, very hot or sticky etc) but it should be more than once a week.

If your DC get wound up by it at night then bathe them in the morning. If a child is in a nappy or pull up or is running around playing outdoors getting muddy or just eating sticky food then giving them a bath is just good parenting.

@WayOutOfLine

I’m really dubious about the “flannel wash” idea too. I can see how that could work in an environment where hot water was limited or if someone had a dermatological condition but in a normal household? Why?

So those of you whose kids do a flannel wash: do you have a stack of flannels laundered and ready to take into the bathroom all the time for people to run under the tap and then wash with? You must be spending more money washing all those flannels than the money you save on showers…

What happens if you have overnight guests? Do you say they can’t have a shower/bath but give them a pile of flannels?

It just seems absurdly and needlessly complicated.

Just seems an odd choice to go into a bathroom that has perfectly functioning shower. Stand next to it, get undressed, and wet a flannel with the tap from the sink, put soap on it, wash her face, rinse, add more soap, wash arm pits...rinse, a DD more soap, was genitals (and bum?), rinse off flannel, and the. Soaking flannel and rinsing off her faces arm pits, bum and vulva of soap ... A final rinsing of the flannel, then getting a towel and drying off/leaving now.

Why wouldn't she just get in the shower? It's got to be less faff?

The small showers in the UK don't help, I love the continental wet room showers with a long hose so it really is easier to shower say after you go to the loo, or just wash your feet or just your hair if you need a quick hairwash. Getting in and out of a small cubicle shower taking off every item of clothing and possibly getting wet hair is more of a faff.

I just lower the shower head if I don't need to wash my hair 🤷‍♀️

Long black shorts and a red T-shirt. Of course they weren’t clean at the end of the holiday, but he was still presentable in public and there was no finger pointing. Post holiday wash pile - very small.

Yes and my dc don't have shampoo. They have great, shiny hair.