Is DD weird?

[pastaalover]

My DD who is 13 has been told she is weird by her friends because she showers every 2 days. Compared to her friends showering once some nearly twice a day. They said that she should shower once a day because she is dirty if she doesn't. Naturally this has made her upset and she doesn't want to go to school as she is scared of what they may say. I want to know if she is weird or her friends are being unreasonable.

My father never wore deodorant in his life and certainly didn't bath or shower every day. He never smelt of BO.

This issue is simple to fix.

1. DD showers daily
2. Monday school shirt washed for Friday. (In sink if no laundry done mid week)

If these 2 things change. Then mean girls can say what they like. But your DD knows they are wrong.

My DD is not a mean girl, but tells me she has a friend who looks to have greasy hair and the other girls comment. The mean girls could be making it up
or
they notice something you don’t.

And presumably you don't know how often or not they all shower?

Greasy hair! The horror! Tell your dd to get over it?

Where does it stop? Greasy hair - not showering every day - having hairy legs - having frownlines - not having perefct eyebrows

Just leave all these girls alone. Let them be sweaty once in a while or have greasy hair. Who cares if they don't?

She probably is among the less usual but it's not a bad thing. Scientific advice is that it would be better not to shower every day but culturally most people have got into the habit of washing every day and so the mindset that less than that is 'dirty'. Teenagers (and some people) will often attack anyone who does something different.

Saying that, I remember going into classrooms at school and university in the afternoons and they would often stink. Mostly I assumed it was kids not using deodorant or changing their clothes often enough but maybe they just were stinkier.

You should in theory be able to go a couple of days without a shower and without changing outer clothes. I know plenty of people that do.

3 days?? So he could go Mon Tues wed wearing the same uniform with no shower until wed night? That's a choice I wouldn't make

I think they could be maybe trying to tell her that she needs to shower more often ? Obviously much nicer and kinder ways to tell her but they are teen girls they can be quite mean unfortunately. Can you pick up another shirt so she has a fresh one everyday or do a midweek wash

I think some people shower too often! I don't shower everyday either. I think some people are weird about it and think they must shower every day or they'll stink. Probably easiest way forward is to let DD shower daily if she wants to but her friends don't need to know about her shower habits really

Love your view - tell OP to not help DD with hygiene.

She’s not weird and they’re very nasty.

Unfortunately, this is the trouble with teenage girls, some can be very bitchy.

I hope your DD is ok.
Please reassure her that she is normal and in no way weird.

She's. It saying don't help her with hygiene

She's saying ignore the crap virtue signalling done under the banner of hygiene

Maybe your teenagers do... Mine dont and nor do my nieces and nephews.

Perhaps your family are unlucky with body odour?

Honestly! “DD should shower 15 times a day and then she needn’t worry blah blah”. Why the af would she let insecure bullies dictate to her what she should do? What if they said her eyes were a horrible colour? Should she get contact lenses? They say she’s short so she has her legs stretched??!

You don’t pander to bullies! I very, very much doubt these girls are kindly telling DD she smells - because I’m sure she doesn’t! These are insecure teen girls picking on something ‘different’ to make a ‘gang member’ feel insecure and themselves feel better.

I wouldn’t say weird but it is unhygienic, especially for a teenager.

Does she also not brush her teeth daily? These are just basic daily hygiene things.

Probably a good moment to have a chat with your daughter about some of these things:

• over sharing personal information with people and learning to navigate conversations with friends and acquaintances
• is it time to shower more often? I think playing sport three times a week, plus weekend activities and being a teen, it's a moment to think about this
• buying a fifth shirt for school and teaching your child to start managing their own washing etc. It's a good opportunity to hand over some responsibility and control to her.

If you’re smelly maybe, but lots of teens don’t shower daily - and you’d never know.

Have you seen the threads on here about showering daily vs less frequently? Have you read this thread? Grown women get weird about this so why should teenagers be any better? There are people who think showering every day is a necessity and anything else is dirty. There are people who swear that they only need 2 showers a week and that they smell delightful.

Teenagers are the more likely to get whiffy than adults because of raging hormones and teenagers are a lot more likely to care what their peer group thinks. I’d make sure she has a fresh shirt for every school day and tell her that if it really bothers her she can tell them that she’s swapped to daily showers and they were so right and she feels better for it - whether she actually does swap or not.

Hooray. Thanks breatheandfocus

False equivalence

Teeth should be brushed twice a day

Bodies should be washed a few times a week - daily washing can actually be harmful in sone cases

Christ no you don't pander to bullies. They'll find something else to try and feel superior about next. My teen DD doesn't shower everyday, she does not smell in the slightest.

Kids will pick at anything. Why doesn’t she shower everyday?

Shower every other day is fine if she doesn’t have greasy hair but she does need to wash underarms with soap and water on the non shower day. Just putting more deodorant on isn’t enough. Also, with the school shirt, can’t you just was one in the week? Think I only had 3 or 4 shirts but they were washed and always clean on.

I think that every other day is gross. Just shower every day. It's not like you have to drag a tin bath into the kitchen ffs.

I have a bath twice a week, it's amazes me that people smell so much they have to shower every single day. It must cost a fortune in electricity and water, a 5 minute power shower is about 75 gallons of water (a bath is 80) so think how much electricity and water you are using if you all have showers every day. Bad for the planet too.

They obviously never thought dd smelt or they would certainly have mentioned it by the sounds of them! So tell her to say perhaps they need to wash more because they smell more!

My DS said-

if you had some poop on your arm, would you just wipe it away with a tissue? it would smell right? You would want to clean yourself with soap, right? Or would you just leave the poop smear on your arm.

he was explaining why he liked to shower after a poop.

So, those not washing for days … you’ve got the poop smear right there on your bum … for days.