FeathersGirl asks: I don’t want to take a daily bath, but my parents say I have to. What should I do?
Oooooooooo! I hate baths! I hate baths! I hate lousy stinking baths!
I wrote a poem about them:
- I hate baths in summer!
- I hate baths in fall!
- Baths are just a bummer!
- They do no good at all!
- Water is for drinking, not for pouring on my head!
- Baths are stupid stinking nasty things I wish were dead!
Okay, I got that out of my system! You might get the idea that I don’t particularly care for baths. But a few times a year, Handsome insists on giving me one. Especially when we’ve just had a really fun hike and I’ve jumped in mud. I think that’s when I’m at my best, but he says I have to bathe. So I do.
And so should you, kid. Much as you might prefer to stay dirty and sweaty and grungy and smelly and… really it sounds great to me! But still, as much as you would rather be that way, your parents are the bosses, and you need to wash.
My trick is to just take it. I sit there and let him pour that awful water all over me, then rub off all the good smells with whatever dumb soap he’s found, and then rinse it off with yet more awful water… and then – what you guys don’t have to deal with – he then brushes my WHOLE BODY, getting tons of loose wet hair off of me, which kind of itches, and then… at last…
He towels me off. Now that part I kind of like. It’s fun, and it means IT’S OVER!
And then he always gives me lots of treats and lets me go nuts playing.
So that’s my answer. Just get through it. You’ll live to play in the dirt another day. Who knows, someday you might even start to like baths. You’re only human, after all!
But a little note to parents as well: Maybe there’s the occasional day when you can let your kid off the hook, and not make her take a bath. That would be a super treat!