I was at a friends house and the conversation goes:
Mum) Justin get into that tub
Justin)But mom I’m not dirty
Mum)You stink
Justin)Just a little
Mum)Get in there NOW
Justin)But I washed yesterday
Mum) And you got dirty again
Justin)If I never get dirty do I have to take a bath again
Mum)Just get in the tub NOW
Of course they always make jokes on tv shows like Leave It To Beaver about baths and things like:
Wally) I’m practically grown up
Beaver) Look Wally, anyone that still has to be told to take a bath ain’t grown up
So why do the wee little shavers hate to bathe? I can’t remember but I guess I was like that too. Do little girls hate to take baths too?
I always hated it as a little kid because it takes so long and is inconvenient, when I could have been doing other things. I never actually refused to take one, though.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And I still do wish showering weren’t a necessary daily thing (and I hate getting out of the shower more because it goes from so warm and nice to so cold). I never wanted or could stand to be dirty either as a kid or now, though.
When you find out let me know. I have resorted to “you don’t want to be the stinky kid that everyone talks about do you?”
And don’t get me started on washing hair. You would think I had abused my children with waterboarding the way they howl when it’s time to wash hair. I’ve had to start using the sink with the sprayer before bubble bath.
My mother once told my brother “you’ve bathed every night for 11 years. Yes, you have to take a bath. The answer will always be yes.”
Not long after that it’s like we couldn’t get him out of there…
It’s not so much the bath as what comes before and after. Before– cutting off play time or TV time. After– combing their hair, making them go to bed (and, for some, a last-minute homework check).
I think it’s more they don’t like switching gears than that they don’t like bathing. Once they’re in, they never want to come out.
Don’t know if girls are the same. I definitely remember not wanting to get my hair washed, partly because I hated the combing before and after, I had/have really snarly hair and it was a painful ordeal, not that I would ever consent to short hair either.
I dunno if I ever hated the bath, probably did when I was realy young, but I remember distinctly disliking showers. You had to stand and shit, it was just all inconvenient, I much preferred taking a bath. Now if I want a bath I shower first (to get myself clean) than bathe, seems most logical to me.
In response to Vox Imperatoris, dude, space heater, man. I got an overhead heater (Japanese houses don’t have central heating) that I turn on when I wake up. I roll out of bed, shower, than immediately am underneath the warm arm. There’s like a 36 milisecond gap from shower to me leaping across the room to warmth, and then all’s right in the world
I have one, but it’s not powerful enough, and I should probably start turning it on sooner before the shower. The fact that master bathroom in my house (which I have to use because the much smaller and adjacent to my bedroom bathroom’s shower is broken) is too large to actually heat the entire airspace in a reasonable amount of time doesn’t help, either. The heater only really works by standing right in front of it, and only really warms you up after you dry off and are warm enough.
Personally I used to hate bathing because I hated having water/soap in my eyes and mouth and I vaguely recall finding showering scary, although I can’t remember why. At some point I fully mastered keeping my eyes and mouth closed while my Mom shampooed away, and I like it okay after that.
I have two boys and they love the bath. Tonight I had to use the bath as a dinnertime motivator (you don’t get to get in the bath until you’ve eaten some dinner). They get in together, though, so it’s fun playtime for them. I imagine when they’re a bit older and it’s more of a chore, they’ll balk.
This is how mine were. Didn’t want to get into the tub. Then, once in, didn’t want to get out. Bubbles gone, water cold, but they still had their boats. Often water all over the bathroom as well.
I also had the hair thing as a kid. (Well, I still do, but now there’s spray-in detangler and leave-in conditioner.)
Neither my brother nor I ever minded baths. Heck we loved em. Baths were play time. We had armies of action figures that lived by the bathtub and had a grand ol’ time with.
Also I think part of kids hating the washing of the hair is it means their face has to get wet. In my experience teaching swim lessons I found that many children seem to think this will mean instant painful death whether it is the bath tub or the pool.
I have this exact same problem with my son. We’ve gotten to the point where I wash the back of his head, pouring a little water over it and scrubbing like normal, then rinsing, but for the front, he’s absolutely terrified of large amounts of water on his face because he recently sucked in a bunch of water during a hair washing. I cannot wash anything from the crown of his head forward without World War III. So I have to wet my fingers and comb until his hair is wet, scrub, then comb again until it’s rinsed out, then rinse the back again (which I guess I could do last). The whole process takes forever, but I’d rather do that than have to deal with him being terrified of the bath. I wish he’d let me use the sink sprayer. How old are your kids? How did you get them to let you try that?
To the OP, for my son it has a lot to do with not wanting to be slowed down by things like food and bathing. They’re just things that get in the way of playing. I suspect a lot of young kids have the same problem. Heck, my husband has the same problem sometimes on weekends. Yuck.
I have a smaller bathroom but it still takes a while to heat up with the small space heater. My solution? I went out and bought one of those timers you use for stuff like christmas lights. I set it so that an hour or so before I wake up it turns on and turns back off right around the time I’d leave the house. I no longer have to wake up early and go turn the heater on or just sleep in and be cold in the bathroom. The room heats up quickly to 95 degrees at least.
I also have it set for right before I get home from work. If I feel like sitting on the can and reading the paper the seat is nice and warm.
Au Revoir, lavoro di traduzione fastidioso per voi, 당신은 진짜 서명이 또한 있는가?,
Clayton_e
My wife and I joke that he’s a living example of Newton’s first law of motion: whatever he’s doing, he wants to keep doing. He fusses when you put him in the bath and he fusses when you take him out.
Man, I loved taking a bath when I was little. I had a little wooden boat that I’d play with in the tub, until one tragic day when the captain sailed his vessel up the tub’s spout and got irretrievably stuck. For *years *after that, I tried to get it out of the spout. (My parents weren’t too happy about it being stuck in there, either.) I finally got it back out again when I was about 7 years old. I confronted Mom with my boat, and she practically collapsed with laughter. My boat was half of one of these; Mom had broken one whilst doing household chore and gave me the intact half (sans metal spring) to entertain me in the tub.
I don’t have a little boat any more, but I still like a hot bubble bath when I’m down with the flu or something.
