How often are you bathing your primary aged children?

[RedRobyn24]

My daughter is 4 and has just started reception. I also have a 9 month old.

At the moment I bathe both of them (sometimes together usually apart) every other day. Is this what other people do? I try not to wash DD1’s hair more than once a week

Are other parents really doing this every day?

To be honest this is a wider question about how the heck parents find the time for everything. I’m a SAHM as well, don’t know how two working parents do it AND make sure their children are eating well and the house is cleaned and the dog it walked and the reading home work is done… but also the child has downtime to just play as well 😬

When I had 1 I would do it every night. I’ve got 7&3 year old and since youngest was born I’ve done every other night as he has really dry skin. I also used to wash my eldest hair once a week but now she’s older and her hair is very long I do it 2/3 times a week as it gets greasy and dirty at school with all the sand and paint!

Nothing wrong with that imo.

If i had a child i would make the effort of a bath or shower every night and morning if i could definitely every night.
Only because i never got a wash as a child once a fortnight in school terms after my mother had a bath.
In the holidays no never had a bath until the last day of the holidays.
Now as an adult i only have showers every day.

Every day from being born. He's now 11 at secondary and showers but the routine was set as a baby.

We are every other night or so for my youngest.

She gets home really late now, so there is only 1hr for dinner, homework, music practice etc before bed. Hair wash once or twice a week.

Bathed every day from them being babies, it was a part of their bedtime routine. 10 and 13 and still bath or shower every day

Bathing is over emphasised in our society. Just keep your kids clean and we'll presented, don't feel pressured by "rules".

Bathing isn't the only way to maintain good hygene

Hygiene standards should evolve when they approach teenage years and have body odor and greasy hair to manage.

I wouldn't be putting soap on anyone's genitals someone previously posted, it's a sensitive area and can cause irritation.

Wow we did a shower and hair wash once a week. Unless there was something really mucky going on. Now they’re at the point of having a smell it’s more often- so on gym days as well.

Kids this age need to wash when they're dirty, there's absoultely no need to wash them every day. One they get to being smelly, hormonal teenagers, then they should probably increase the frequency.

Every other day.

Mine do wash when they’re dirty… which is every day! I don’t know if my perception is skewed because we live quite rurally, but aren’t kids always dirty? 😂
My 6 year old has been playing with his diggers outside since we got home from school. He’s filthy. 10 year old is at hockey practice then she has football training this evening. Every day there’s something that means they need a shower before bed.

Do wash the external genital area with a mild soap. The mons pubis, or simply put "groin", is not sensitive, nor is it self-cleaning, nor is it its own delicately balanced ecosystem with cosmic self-cleaning powers. It is the same type of skin as your underarms or inner thighs. Pubic hair (if present, in the groin or the outer labia) must be washed with a mild soap as it traps sweat, dead skin, and bacteria. The sensitive skin of the labia and clitoris also needs cleaning, but only with warm water. Same for adults and kids.

It was part of the bed time routine from day one. Up to bath, teeth, read a story, in bed lights out. As they got older they could read to themselves but they still had a nightly bath. It was what 20 min?

I used to wash the kids twice a week but now that son is in reception and daughter has started putting food in her hair (🙄) we do every other day.

Ours are older now but they always had a bath every night since baby days. It was partly routine, nice wind down time and partly necessity. They often smelt like old food or stale wee - i didn't think I've got a particularly sensitive nose but maybe i do. They just carried on and still bathe or shower nightly. Their dad and I have a quick bath before bed too. I hate the idea of getting into my nice clean bed with sweaty feet and smelly armpits.

I don't understand saying you don't have time. We both worked FT and fitted it in fine. It only needs to take 5 mins if you're in a rush. Though in our old house we had a massive bathroom with a wicker armchair and I'd often sit there catching up with their day and sometimes having a quick gin and tonic! When they started homework we'd practice spellings and times tables and stuff. Or if they wanted a long story I'd start reading it bathside!

They (8 and 4) shower or bath 2-3 times a week and I’m dreading having to increase it as I don’t know where we’d get the time! I know others would wash more often but they don’t smell and they’re not dirty.

Yeah I disagree with this. Soap on the surrounding skin drips and moves when you wash and can still cause irritation. Water is fine.

Perhaps if you aren't sensitive go with a mild soap if you want to but it isn't essential or recommended.

https://www.devonsexualhealth.nhs.uk/your-sexual-health/genital-hygiene-our-tips/

But also parents shouldn’t wait until kids are noticeably smelly before opting to bathe them.

Those are also the parents who don't wash or change their underwear or brush their teeth every day. On Tiktok there are sometimes clips from bikini waxers talking about the worst clients they've experienced. Some of the stories are absolutely grim. Grown adults who have clearly not showered in days or have faecal matter in their bum area before going for a wax. Stuff like that can only be normalised if children grew up in a home where it was totally acceptable not to wash yourself regularly. So many adults have no benchmark of what is normal based on the neglect they experienced growing up and pass that onto their kids.

We don’t use public transport, we live in the countryside and we don’t have lots of pollution. Whenever I visit London I’m disgusted by the amount of grime in my hair on my body, awful. From that perspective yes, of course I would clean them daily.. but it’s not like that where we live.

Neither of my children go to nursery

I hope you’re not suggesting washing a 4yo and 9 month old every other day means they’re are going to have the poor hygiene you’ve described??

Bath or, mostly, shower daily, including hair wash, for DD5, except on the odd occasion when she’s not been up to much and we've got home later than usual.

She’s had the same routine since she started nursery as she used to come home with hair & clothes smelling institutional, for want of a better word, and it was nice to wash it away before bed. Now, it’s mostly habit, part of the evening wind down.

As a baby she was bathed every day, especially when weaning when sometimes it was even more often! Small babies also have milk dribbles and it settles in their wee skin folds which get cheesy and stinky if not washed every day!
Around pre school age it was probably every 2/3 days unless particularly mucky.
As she got older I found it wasn’t really necessary to have a full bath or shower any more than a couple times a week. But now she is 11 she is starting to get body odour and it’s a chore getting her in a shower at least every other day. She does like a bath but a shower is more practical and less wasteful of water.

I think teens not bathing/ showering every day is disgusting quite frankly. Their hormones are all over the place, almost every teen I've known, including my own now adult cgildren, was much more sweaty as a teen than when they reached adulthood.

Maybe they accuse
each other of smelling because they actually do...

Do you shower every day yourself?