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.

I think that's really dependent - I had body odour at 8, and periods at 9 so definitely needed to shower/bath/wash more often than I did before that

Anyone who says that is neglect is trivialising real neglect.

1-2 times a week is fine.

Just so people are aware, at least one of the children in question was of nappy wearing age.

Wiping their arse with wet wipes and only washing it once a week is 100% neglectful in my opinion and is likely to cause discomfort at a minimum.

As I stated earlier Same thing in 70 s in our household. With a tin bath. Couldn't be doing with the hassle of filling that daily

Hardly unusual at the time

There seems to be a lot of question about what does and doesn't constitute neglect.

neglect
verb
fail to care for properly

That's the definition. Leaving your child dirty and stinky and putting them to bed in smelly sheets absolutely falls under that.

Neglect doesn’t have a yard stick, it is a scale, from minor to major. No oje is trivialising serious neglect, no one.

but I’d feel I was neglecting my own personal grooming if I washed once a week, and I’d not do that to my kids, bums, genitals, skin, hair, it all needs a wash, with an appropriate gentle cleanser and warm water. What ever age you are. We should teach our children about personal hygiene and personal hygiene is not washing your bum or bits once a week,

Should get a bum gun. Much better than toilet paper

Once a week is definitely not enough 🤢

And, body odor at younger ages is not always a sign of maturity / puberty. It can be entirely typical for a child to have body odor at 5, or 6 and not go thru puberty for 8-10 more years.

Active kids gets sweaty.

Yeah, I guess some people might be applying a threshold of what ss would regard as neglect. But, I agree, it's a failure to care well for a child if you can only find the time or energy to ensure they are cleaned once a week.

'I don't smell because I shower every other day'

That is fine as a bare minimum but some people are defending weekly baths and showers for grubby, sticky kids who are notorious for not being particularly fussy bum wipers.

Not neglect.

But usually sub optimum.

4 year olds don’t wipe that well with toilet paper, for a start.

Its a snapshot isn't it. If people cba to teach and maintain basic hygiene with their dc what else can't they be arsed to do. Of course ss are not going to go knocking on the doors of the slack nonwashers but it needs saying that it isn't ok. If adults choose to shower weekly that is their grim choice but our kids need parenting.

Is your child bedridden? How long does it take you to plop your kid in an actual bath? Thirty seconds? 5-10 minutes to bathe? I’d wager far less time than faffing around with this top and tail business from medieval times.

My dc are 10 and 12 and manage to wash themselves perfectly fine thanks.

I wouldn’t say it’s neglect, but don’t they start to smell a little weird after a couple of days? My kids are nine and six and they typically do. We do baths or showers every other day.

It's only neglect if they need more baths than they are being given because they are dirty/smelly.

I don't think it's neglect. My 5yo dd is bathed once a week after her swimming lesson. She doesn't smell at all and always looks pristine. She washes her face, hands feet and privates, every evening before bedtime. When she gets a bit older I'll introduce a midweek shower and increase as necessary as she grows up. Her hair is curly, and doesn't need washing more than once a week at the mo.

DS can only have 2 showers a week or his eczema gets really bad.

Obviously this will have to change as he gets older (and sweatier) but in the meantime it's what's best for him.

If the OP's kids (that you're referring to) were eg being bullied at school for being dirty then I'd say she was absolutely out of order but some kids don't need a daily bath.

That thread made me think she might be struggling a bit. The pile on is not going to make her feel any better.

DS8 is bathed twice a week, he's probably gone a week without a bath at some stage and I can categorically state he is the least neglected kid on the planet!

These types of comments add by these types of people should be brushed off and ignored. Actual neglect is a topic left to those who understand it.

See I don’t get this. How is it not more effort to strip off, wet a flannel, sponge yourself down without soaking the floor, rinsing it out several times to remove soap etc than just hopping in the shower with your hair tied up for 2 minutes?

Laughing at idea that curly hair “doesn’t need washing”. Love my kids curly shining fresh clean curly hair which gets washed every day. Fresh curls look best, in my opinion.

That's good for you. Your children probably don't have curly hair, they just have baby curls or a slight wave.

You don't wash curly or kinky hair everyday.

It goes frizzy. It takes ages. You tie it up when you go in the shower.

Also, actual curly hair doesn't get greasy oily and smelly. It dries out instead.

It can easily go a week or two depending on the style it's kept in and how tight the curls/kinks are.

No daily bath or shower even in summer if they've been wearing sun tan lotion etc?