Adult Child: What do you do when you missed a few things during parenting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could your other kids talk to him? Might be easier hearing from siblings.

My other kids have told him with brutal honesty. He's the only one who came home this year (rest are scattered on different coasts) so there is no one here to tell him but me. I was tempted to block the front door and make him go back upstairs.

Its a bit too late to parent and bully him now. He should have been bathe/shower every day starting when he was born.

[Anonymous]

Is he overly sensitive or something? I think you just have to tell him bluntly. “Phil, you haven’t bathed in two days and you smell really bad. You hair is greasy and unkempt. You need to do better than this. Please shower and change the sheets on your bed, as the guest room is starting to smell. I’d you can throw the sheets down to the washer in the next half hour, I’ll run the laundry. There are clean sheets in the linen closet you can make your bed with. Did you bring soap and shampoo with you? If not you can get some from our closet.”

[Anonymous]

Ask him if he’s ever smelled something he found really unpleasant and wait for his answer. Then ask how he reacted to it, and listen to that answer. Then tell him that you’re not trying to hurt his feelings but that he has body odor and it repels other people away from him. People don’t want to embarrass him, so they may not say anything, but they’ll keep their distance, including nice girls he may want to date. Or it will cost him good job opportunities. He may have built up a tolerance and not notice the smell any more but other people definitely do.

Hand him soap, shampoo, deodorant and a soft, fluffy bath towel and tell him you expect him to use them all daily.

[Anonymous]

OP, I recommend you ask this question in the Special Needs Kids forum
(Jeff might have just changed the name of that forum recently, but it's something like that)

This is a VERY common thing on the special needs forum, and parents on that forum know what to do about it. This sort of thing isn't just "one of those things" that normal kids have going on, and therefore, the usual parenting methods of trying to change your kid's behavior don't really work well.

I have a friend with a (now adult) daughter with this issue. The daughter is on the spectrum (what's formerly called Asperger's, now called ASD) and she's got OCD. Brilliant kid but had that quirk. Her hair was often greasy. My friend was always on her to shower or bathe. I do recall the girl didn't like the feel of water on her skin, and that was part of it.

Last spring when her daughter was a HS senior, my friend was freaking out that the daughter would not make friends in college due to this issue.

OP, I strongly suggest you go to the special needs forum, and also, ask your kid's former pediatrician, or your own doctor about this, just to get some direction.