How do you get a teenage boy to keep up with personal hygiene?

[Theromanempire]

DS is 14 and we are really struggling to get him to wash regularly, put deodorant on etc and therefore he stinks a lot of the time. He just doesn't seem to get the need for daily washing and using deodorant.

It is ok at the moment as he obviously isn't at school and hasn't been out with friends since March and the smell is a relatively new issue. But it obviously needs sorting before he goes back to school in September.

He is just lazy and cannot be bothered

Tell him he can have his phone/tablet/console once he is showered and dressed with teeth and hair brushed.

Eventually, when he is in the habit of keeping himself clean he can manage his own screentime etc.

girls or other peer pressure is what changes it.
you will not be able to breathe for lynx

Tell him girls like clean boys who smell nice, and hate boys who stink. If that doesn’t motivate him, nothing will .

bernadette I hear you but I am happy for them to lounge in pj's in the mornings during school holidays so I don't want to enforce rules where he has to be washed and dressed so rigidly (I know everyone has different views on this) - once school starts, that sounds like a plan.

blue peer pressure/girls would work but that will kick in once they go back to school and I don't want him to be the 'smelly' boy before then.

No interest in girls atm so not sure that would work

Ok so give him a deadline - 11am. He can chill/use his devices etc til 11am. Then he goes and gets himself ready.

Give him another year or two. I PROMISE you, he will not be out of the shower.

Nothing works before that, I'm speaking from experience with boys here.

Shower each night before bed then instead? Then can still lounge (teeth brushed of course) in the morning?

lipz I hope so! He has zero interest in his appearance (other than a penchant for expensive trainers ) whereas a lot of his friends work out, have trendy haircuts etc. He just isn't bothered!

"Come stinky, shower, NOW. You're encouraging flies into the house!"

Or something as equally blunt,

houchin have done the blunt talking in that 'you absolutely stink' etc but it makes no difference as he just doesn't care. How he cannot smell it on himself, I have no idea

Sorry, no advice but watching with interest as I have a 15 YO DSD who has absolutely no interest in washing or personal hygiene.

Even when sent up to shower - she’ll ‘forget’ to wash her lank greasy hair.

God I can’t wait for peer pressure to kick in. At the moment getting her to shower 3 x a week is such a chore.

Much sympathy as my 12yo has got to this point.
BIL assures me DH was worse, until he hit 17 and decided he wanted a girlfriend, whereupon DH started washing, brushing hair, bought some decent clothes, taught himself to cook and generally turned into a decent human being... I live in hope!

My 14 year old DS is exactly the same. No interest in his appearance or girls to encourage him and I have to remind him several times a day before he will have a shower. I'm actually looking forward to the dousing himself in lynx stage that I keep hearing about

My 14 year old DS is exactly the same. No interest in his appearance or girls to encourage him and I have to remind him several times a day before he will have a shower. I'm actually looking forward to the dousing himself in lynx stage that I keep hearing about

Glad to hear that it is quite common and should sort itself out when he wants a girlfriend - just unfortunate we have to endure the smell in the meantime

the smell is quite something isn't it.

must be tough on the little (or not so little) guys suddenly going from sweet smelling to the opposite.

Send him out in the garden and hose him down.

It self-fixes when required. By this point you will have become immune to the sweaty skinny growing festering increasingly hairy funk. When something freshly scrubbed, shorn and shaved appears, you will blink in confusion and assume a guest has found their way in.
Be warned, though. The boy/man continuum is subject to occasional polarity reversals for some time.
You have a long way to go yet. You are still attempting to fix the beast, instead of accepting it for the unhygienic but loveable creature it is.

madwoman love it!

I just had a slight breakthrough by reminding him of a time we went into a shop and there was the most horrendous BO smell in there - DS was disgusted by it. So I have told him that is what he is inflicting on us and it is unfair on us all. Time will tell if that makes a difference!

OP are you talking about my son?! I think you are!
Why wear clean clothes and put on deodorant when you can lift old ones off the floor ? Why brush ur hair if no one sees you? Clean teeth? Nah they're fine

At 14 my son never washed and smelled gross 😂 I would tell him he smelled and he didn’t care. He is now 16 and I can never get in the bathroom because he is in the shower for hours every day. His room always smells of man deodorant. He gets up and dressed immediately even if we aren’t going anywhere - I rarely see him in his pyjamas.

My 12 year old is still at the grubby phase although he doesn’t have BO yet. Over lockdown he doesn’t get dressed unless we leave the house (which he does under protest!). His bedroom is grim.

My 10 year old daughter is a different kettle of fish, bathes almost every day, washes her own hair and uses deodorant without being reminded of any of it.