To those with “crisp” clean preschoolers...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me get tomato sauce stains out of my DS’s nice cotton tees. I soak in OxiClean, wash on warm with lots of detergent, and the stains still take multiple rounds of this to come out—if they ever do.

You may be using too much detergent. Try using Dr. Bronners liquid soap and hand wash before throwing in the laundry.

Not to derail the riveting conversation in this thread, but can you elaborate on your technique with the bronners? I love that stuff but it never occurred to me to use it to get stains out. Do you scrub the fabric?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How come Europeans have "crisp" clean preschoolers? They are so neat and well put together. Is it the style of clothes that they wear? I saw many kids dressed similar to Prince George and Princess Charlotte during a recent Europe trip. How come?

They iron and bath their kids.

Do you mean "bathe?" Bath is a noun.

[Anonymous]

I agree this thread has gotten seriously bonkers. A lot of people on here are throwing around English references so if these are Indians who are more familiar with English customs than American ones, this may explain it. I went to school in the UK but even I :

a) have never heard that Dove and Wren poem. That sounds seriously coocoo (no pun intended).
b) don't "bath" my kids. I BATHE them.
c) don't iron as much as some people here are claiming to, but I know Brits who do. But in America, sorry, we really don't.
d) do not get my child on a morning poop schedule!!!!!
e) do not scrape anything in my child's mouth; we BRUSH it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How come Europeans have "crisp" clean preschoolers? They are so neat and well put together. Is it the style of clothes that they wear? I saw many kids dressed similar to Prince George and Princess Charlotte during a recent Europe trip. How come?

They iron and bath their kids.

Do you mean "bathe?" Bath is a noun.

Oh shut up. I feel embarrassed for grammar and spelling nazis who find time to correct others on an online anonymous internet forum and somehow feel smug.

FOCUS.

Find a better use of your time. Start with becoming a better parent and following better hygiene and grooming yourself so that your kids can learn by imitating you. Clean kids come from clean parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How come Europeans have "crisp" clean preschoolers? They are so neat and well put together. Is it the style of clothes that they wear? I saw many kids dressed similar to Prince George and Princess Charlotte during a recent Europe trip. How come?

They iron and bath their kids.

Do you mean "bathe?" Bath is a noun.

Oh shut up. I feel embarrassed for grammar and spelling nazis who find time to correct others on an online anonymous internet forum and somehow feel smug.

FOCUS.

Find a better use of your time. Start with becoming a better parent and following better hygiene and grooming yourself so that your kids can learn by imitating you. Clean kids come from clean parents.

We are having a cultural misinterpretation here. To "bath" a child is a British term. In America, we use "bathe." Rather than being nit-picky, your use of this terminology is what clued me in to why you have different daily routines and expectations than we do. Carry on with what you do, and we'll carry on with what we do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How come Europeans have "crisp" clean preschoolers? They are so neat and well put together. Is it the style of clothes that they wear? I saw many kids dressed similar to Prince George and Princess Charlotte during a recent Europe trip. How come?

They iron and bath their kids.

Do you mean "bathe?" Bath is a noun.

Oh shut up. I feel embarrassed for grammar and spelling nazis who find time to correct others on an online anonymous internet forum and somehow feel smug.

FOCUS.

Find a better use of your time. Start with becoming a better parent and following better hygiene and grooming yourself so that your kids can learn by imitating you. Clean kids come from clean parents.

We are having a cultural misinterpretation here. To "bath" a child is a British term. In America, we use "bathe." Rather than being nit-picky, your use of this terminology is what clued me in to why you have different daily routines and expectations than we do. Carry on with what you do, and we'll carry on with what we do.

"The Dove and the Wren" is also an English children's nursery rhyme, and not one which children in America typically learn or are familiar with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree this thread has gotten seriously bonkers. A lot of people on here are throwing around English references so if these are Indians who are more familiar with English customs than American ones, this may explain it. I went to school in the UK but even I :

a) have never heard that Dove and Wren poem. That sounds seriously coocoo (no pun intended).
b) don't "bath" my kids. I BATHE them.
c) don't iron as much as some people here are claiming to, but I know Brits who do. But in America, sorry, we really don't.
d) do not get my child on a morning poop schedule!!!!!
e) do not scrape anything in my child's mouth; we BRUSH it.

Ironing clothes is an English custom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand people who ONLY use clean clothes. It seems so wasteful to throw out stained clothing. We have separate play clothes and nice clothes. I'm ok with sending the lightly stained play clothes to preschool because that's where they get dirty to begin with. The stains we get are usually artwork-related, my kids are fairly tidy eaters at this point.

I rarely iron their play clothes - but most of them are cotton and don't wrinkle much to begin with. I will iron clothes if we're going somewhere nice.

Do you wear stained clothes?
I toss stained clothes if I can't remove the stain. Wearing stained clothes is disgusting. I'm not poor.

Keeping separate clothes for play is weird, too much effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree this thread has gotten seriously bonkers. A lot of people on here are throwing around English references so if these are Indians who are more familiar with English customs than American ones, this may explain it. I went to school in the UK but even I :

a) have never heard that Dove and Wren poem. That sounds seriously coocoo (no pun intended).
b) don't "bath" my kids. I BATHE them.
c) don't iron as much as some people here are claiming to, but I know Brits who do. But in America, sorry, we really don't.
d) do not get my child on a morning poop schedule!!!!!
e) do not scrape anything in my child's mouth; we BRUSH it.

Ironing clothes is an English custom?

Sigh. You are getting frustrated and so it is making you tiresome and pedantic. As I said, carry on doing what you do: ironing/not ironing, scraping/not scraping, bathing/not bathing. It really doesn't matter to me.

OP, I hope you got some good hints as to how to keep your preschooler looking tidier and hopefully this latest thread derailment wasn't too distracting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How come Europeans have "crisp" clean preschoolers? They are so neat and well put together. Is it the style of clothes that they wear? I saw many kids dressed similar to Prince George and Princess Charlotte during a recent Europe trip. How come?

They iron and bath their kids.

Do you mean "bathe?" Bath is a noun.

“Bath” is commonly used as a verb in the UK. Or it could be a simple typo. Stop being a jerk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree this thread has gotten seriously bonkers. A lot of people on here are throwing around English references so if these are Indians who are more familiar with English customs than American ones, this may explain it. I went to school in the UK but even I :

a) have never heard that Dove and Wren poem. That sounds seriously coocoo (no pun intended).
b) don't "bath" my kids. I BATHE them.
c) don't iron as much as some people here are claiming to, but I know Brits who do. But in America, sorry, we really don't.
d) do not get my child on a morning poop schedule!!!!!
e) do not scrape anything in my child's mouth; we BRUSH it.

Ironing clothes is an English custom?

-said the mother with the stinky children

[Anonymous]

My boys are older now, but I never could have bothered with some of these routines. I always sent them to daycare in comfy, pull-on pants and soft tee shirts so they could move around freely. Very little white or pale colors, so no stains. My sister sends her kids with tons of zippers, buttons and snaps and I feel bad for them. Yes, they look cute, but that little oxford shirt and sweater vest just isn't as comfortable as a plain tee. We tease her that they look like little lord fauntleroy.

Showers daily during the summer or when needed, but less often during the winter. My husband is military so our boys get a buzzcut once a month and he irons everybody's dressy clothes on the rare occasion that they need to dress up. They always look presentable and clean, at least at the start of the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand people who ONLY use clean clothes. It seems so wasteful to throw out stained clothing. We have separate play clothes and nice clothes. I'm ok with sending the lightly stained play clothes to preschool because that's where they get dirty to begin with. The stains we get are usually artwork-related, my kids are fairly tidy eaters at this point.

I rarely iron their play clothes - but most of them are cotton and don't wrinkle much to begin with. I will iron clothes if we're going somewhere nice.

I just can’t send my kids to school in stained clothes. I save them for art projects at home.

Stained clothes that can’t be fixed become home clothes. Fine for bumming around on a lazy day, or making big messes. I just toss stained clothes into a small bin and use them, as needed.

I'm so Type A I can't handle stained clothes. They go in the trash if I can't get the stains out, but I have a pretty good stain arsenal so that doesn't happen often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know. I struggle to put sunscreen on my toddler's face in the morning, and it leaves a white residue then gets on whatever shirt he's wearing. I have no idea how other toddlers sit still for more even sunscreen application.

We do sunscreen first, then shirt. We have to change shirts because DS wipes peanut butter all over his pj shirt as part of the breakfast ritual. DS will help with sunscreen if I give him a bit to rub on his leg while I work on his face/arms.

Always shirt last. Everything gets done first, including sunscreen and breakfast. Shirt goes on before you head out the door.

IT’s T SHIRT TIME!!!!!!!
Any other Jersey Shore fans out there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me get tomato sauce stains out of my DS’s nice cotton tees. I soak in OxiClean, wash on warm with lots of detergent, and the stains still take multiple rounds of this to come out—if they ever do.

You may be using too much detergent. Try using Dr. Bronners liquid soap and hand wash before throwing in the laundry.

Not to derail the riveting conversation in this thread, but can you elaborate on your technique with the bronners? I love that stuff but it never occurred to me to use it to get stains out. Do you scrub the fabric?

I thought stains you were supposed to wash with cold water? Or is that just for blood? My toddler’s clothes have food stains and now I’m wondering if it’s because I do a short cold cycle before a warm wash and rinse.