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

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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.

I also think it comes down to wiping bums! Some kids are not good at that so they need a bath more often 😅

As a mum.of 20 year old who showers daily, he was bathed every night as a little kid.

Ds16 has sen and didn't really like washing. He showers once a week.

So on that very limited data set, you set up go habits in childhood.

Until you have a teen I'm not sure you know how eye bleedingly bad uncontrolled BO can be.

There was a man stacking shelf in the shop who had BO so bad I don't think he even knew deodorant existed and I guess he's about a popular as someone who smells of poo. You need to learn good hygiene before you hit puberty IMO. Once a day might be too much but once a week as a adult, you might not smell it, but you smell.

It's not neglect while they are little. I grew up in a house with 7 of us and one bathroom. We had one bath a week each and it wasn't an issue until the teen years when things can get a bit pungent.

My ds (15) has about three showers a week. It doesn't cause him any problems. I know as soon as he meets a girl, my water bill will soar, so I'm happy with things as they are. 🙂

Yeah but it sounds like they didn't get one bath a week. A child who bathes once a week and doesn't look like you described is not neglected. You've completely twisted it round.

I was a 70s child and only had one bath a week with hair washing.
It was the norm back then as no shower.
We did wash hands and face twice a day though.

It’s worked exceedingly well for my kids who are under a specialised paed and immunologist. We also had a second and third opinion as it took a long time to get regime right for them so we will go with what is working well for our kids and our medical advice. But cheers for the Google and proving my point that often individual recommendations are ignored by mumsnetters!

YANBU, DD does have a bath most nights but that's just because it's part of.our routine, she also swims once or twice a week and in the summer we have a hot tub in the garden so needs washing after that. It just works for us but sometimes we do skip bath to let her skin have a break

Christ, not another one of these threads with a bunch of people farting on about how they only bathed once a week in the 70s and didn’t smell. Well guess what? 1. I bet you did smell whatever you thought and 2. It’s not the fucking 70s anymore, almost everyone has hot clean relatively cheap water piped directly into their house, wash yourself and your stinky sweaty sticky kids daily for fucks sake.

Neglect no, lazy parenting yes.

If you wouldn't go a week without washing yourself, why would you leave your kids that long?

What people did in the 1970s is irrelevant. That was 50 years ago and they were being raised by a generation who'd been at war and were lucky to get a bath once a week. We've moved on.

At 4 does your kid not get filthy? Mine is 5 and has a bath every day. Very occasionally (maybe 3 times a year) He's too tired and will have one the following morning instead. If he hasn't ended up with dinner in his hair, he is usually hot and sweaty (ADHD, never stops), caked in mud, hair full of sand, at this time of year slathered in suncream and often - all of the above combined!

I'm hoping his nightly bath will get us a step ahead for the teenage years 😆

Thank God they go swimming.

My son with allergies and eczema is also under a specialist dermatologist and allergy consultants who don't agree with that at all.. it's not just random Google.

I'm 65 and we didn't have a bathroom till I was 16 so once a week in a tin bath in the kitchen was my experience!

I shower at least once a day now - because I CAN.

There needs to be some kind of washing daily. Even in the olden days, a bowl or basin and a washcloth were used for 'pits and bits'.

Unless you're using some sort of bidet, at the very least you need to wash your arse daily.

It's less hassle to just have a five minute bath or shower. It doesn't need to be right before bed or first thing in the morning though.

And people who don't wash regularly, we can smell you. Just like people can smell smokers, or a house with dogs.

Of course it's not neglect. If they are smelling or visibly dirty, yes, they need bathing. If not, it isn't necessary, especially if they don't like it. My son is the same as yours OP - after he's had a bath he takes soo long to go to sleep after (seems the wrong way round!). We aim for twice a week. Back in the 90s I'm sure it was the done thing to have a bath once or twice a week - not just myself but childhood friends were the same!

I'm actually shocked at washing your kids once week. Every other day I can understand - just about but once a week is... surprising. Do you only wash once a week OP? Also how old are your kids? You really should teach them better hygiene than this. If they think it's normal to wash once a week as a child then it will carry on to adulthood where they will face a rude awakening as a teenager when all the extra smells appear

Not neglect but definitely unusual not to give them a good wash more often. Their bits will get sore if not cleaned and dried.

I don't believe 3 week old unwashed hair looked and smelled clean either.

it was a link shared with me but like I’ve said in the last post, children will differ and recommendations may vary. Given that, I’m not surprised that something else is working for you. In fact, my kids are on different creams and steroids because they are not the same children. What I’ve been trying to say is that what works for one child may not work for the other - eg some kids love bathtime before bed and it soothes them, others it wakes them up. But apparently there is a search here for the correct answer of bathing. So often with kids there are nuances and not a correct answer for every child but that isn’t what is being sought here - we must get the correct answer that works for everyone!

She actually said she washes her children once a week so that sounds like nothing in between, that is neglectful imo. They're also sleeping in dirty sheets so yes, they probably do smell.
Let's not pretend that smelly children don't exist.

I'm sorry but your children's bottoms must be smelly.

The main point I was trying to make was that not bathing often used to be the standard/default advice for eczema. That should not be the case anymore.

Not that infrequent bathing never works for an individual

Absolutely not neglect. I was brought up by my Granny & Grandfather and weekly baths were the norm. We did our bits and pits during the week and no complaints. Grandad was a GP and Granny a nurse. They grew up poor in Ireland and that's how is was.

special needs/dermatology issues aside it’s LAZY parenting I’d go as far as saying negligent and irresponsible.

@spriots the thing is soap is acidic. The PH of skin is about 5. So if someone has skin conditions it would be best to bathd with PH adjusted products Cetaphil, Epimax etc as to not strip the oils.