Hi,
Our 17 month old hates having his hair washed, and I was wondering if any of you have any tips on making this a smooth or pleasant experience? Mainly he hates getting water on his face, and is happy to make the hair washing movements with his hands and even likes to wash himself with a washcloth. Any ideas would be really helpful!
On another front in the bathtub, during the last 2 times I've given him a bath, he has pooped in the tub. This must be common, but I don't see much written about it. Anybody else had this happen? How did you react? He's too little now to start potty training him, right, and making a big deal might be a bad idea, too?
Bathtime isn't as fun as it used to be!!!! Thanks for any suggestions!
For the hair washing dilemma, try one of those bath visors. My kids LOVED them, because the water stayed off their faces, and it made a waterfall in front of their eyes. In fact, they called them their "waterfall hats". I got mine at Babies-R-Us for a few dollare for a 2-pack.
Sorry, I have no suggestions on the pooping in the tub problem...
My son hates it as well, I just give him a wash rag and let him hold it over his face, that keeps him calm and the water doesnt get it his eyes.
As far as the poop, I would start potty training him, he's not too little at all. Put him on the potty after he does that to teach him where to go.
Good luck to you. :)
A.
My son used to scream when we'd get water on his face too. After the summer, when we took him swimming a lot, he got used to it. Now we give him a "1 2 3" and then dump water straight over his head and he's fine. All we need to do is wipe off his face with a dry washcloth to keep the drips out of his eyes. I'm not sure exactly how we got to that point except that we just kept doing it. You can get containers to rinse hair that specifically keep water out of your kids face (see One Step Ahead, for example), but honestly, I think they're sort of silly.
As for pooping in the bathtub, it's happened to us several times, though not recently. I think the problem is that we feed them and then they go straight into the bath. I had these images of all the bath toys being alive like in Toy Story and running screaming away the first time it happened. Pretty funny. Anyway, we just evacuate the toys, take him out of the bath, flush the poop and wash the tub. No big deal (though it is gross, I agree). If he shows signs of contemplating a poop before we take the bath, I'll frequently read him a story or we'll play for 10 minutes or so beforehand, with the hopes of catching it in the diaper instead.
We too use the shampoo rinse container that has the handle on one side and the rubber mold (to kind of mold to their head) to rinse the shampoo out. I want to say it was maybe $4 at Toys R Us. I've seen it since at Walmart too. Works well. Tried the visors, but I personally like the rinse cup better...I'm sure that's just a personal preferance thing since my kids didn't like wearing the visors so much so it was hard to get them to wear them right to keep the water out of the face, but still wash their hair. We do a washcloth in front of the face too to make sure no water gets in the face. It took us longer than it should have to get this routine down that works well for us. My kids still don't like the cleaning part as they like the playing in the water, but hey, part of getting older I guess. (They are 3 and almost 2 now.)
The visors work great. My son is 4 and we still use it.
My daughter absolutely hates to have her hair washed as well. I finally bought some of those non slip bathtub decals and stuck them up high on the wall in the bathtub and have her look up at them while I'm rinsing her hair. I also found a container at Wal-Mart designed to help rinse hair. One side is molded so it fits over her forehead. We spent about 10 bucks and it has made bath time alot easier. As far as the pooping in the tub my daughter does it from time to time. In fact her pediatrician suggested giving her a warm bath when she's been constipated because the warm water relaxes the muscles and could help her poop.
