Rub A Dub Dub
I had to laugh when I read a discussion on a mom blog that I visit frequently. This mom wanted to know how often other moms bathed their children. She said, “As a kid I always had a bath once a week, or a shower when I was older.”
I’ll get to the reason why I find this amusing in just a minute, first I want to tell you that I was NOT laughing at this mom but her statement did bring back a lot of memories.
I remember Grandma Layne telling me about how they took baths when they were young in a tub similar to the one this dog is getting a bath in. On Saturday night they filled the tub up with water, heated it and scrubbed up with home made lye soap. They didn’t refill it for every person who bathed and her father always went first. By the time the last person in the house bathed (the youngest child) I’m sure the water was not very clean.
Back then life on the farm provided few luxuries. Taking a hot shower or bath everyday just wasn’t possible.
But the real reason I found this mom’s question funny is because of one of my sons hated bathing with a passion (actually all my boys did, but one was worse than the others) Getting him to bathe was extremely challenging. He hated it and thought it was a waste of time. Why take a bath when you could be outside playing?
If I didn’t watch him closely he would get out of the tub or shower exactly like he went in….filthy. In his mind ten seconds of getting wet should do the trick.
Once we were vacationing at the beach and one night I asked him if he’d taken a shower. His reply was, “Of course not mom, I’m on vacation!”
Which reminds of another incident involving his cousin. One Christmas vacation his cousin (who also shall remain nameless) spent a week with us. The day he got ready to go home he looked at me and said, “Thanks for having me Aunt Teresa. Next time I think I’ll bring my toothbrush though.”
It’s been my experience that until boys are teenagers and reach the age where they care what teenage girls think about them, they prefer to be a stinking mess of walking germs.
Believe it or not….I miss those days and those stinking little boys!
My children have differing ideas about how often their children should bathe. I would be surprised to learn that one of my granddaughters has ever gone a single day without a bath. Others of my grandchildren routinely go several days, especially when the weather isn’t conducive to outdoor play. And, yes, two of those grandchildren are boys! There’s no discernible difference in health or appearance between the frequent washers and the reluctant scrubbers, so maybe everyone should relax about baths.
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When I was younger, we had neighbors who bathed their girls in the inflatable swimming pool on the front lawn. The girls were little, 3 girls under 3 or 4 years at the time, but I still found it funny. They’d splash in the pool with the soap and then get rinsed off with the garden hose before running in to “air dry” and dress.
We had that situation when I was a child, but our order-of-baths was different; it went from youngest to oldest……..the “water reservoir” on the wood stove was at the ready, and warm water was added as new bathers came to the tub. Thinking back, and knowing the size of the galvanized tub we used, I can’t imagine how Daddy and John got into it!!!!
Another reason to be so thrilled to move into the “new” house with running water and bathrooms!!!!!