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[quote=Anonymous]My step kid has always been lazy about anything hygiene related. Pure, pure laziness. While I have dutifully been monitoring the basics for a couple of years, and "reteaching" her things every so months, and then following it all up with as much positive reinforcement as I can, none of it is working.  And I'm at my wit's end.

She is forced to take a shower every night--at least at my house. Her other family lets her go as long as she wants without a shower under the theory that eventually she'll get sick of her own smell and take care of herself. Sometimes, she return after a few days from that other house and she smells like a dead rodent trapped in the walls of a house. Talking, cajoling and demanding anything better from the other "adults" has all come to naught. So if she doesn't do it for herself, it's not happening.

She is also forced to brush her teeth at my house--which only happens if I stand and watch her do it. She repeatedly tells me that she doesn't bother for days at a time while she's with her other family.

She doesn't wipe properly--her underwear... well. You know what I'm talking about. I mean... she NEVER properly wipes.

We recently found out that she will also just pee in her pants whenever she feels like it. Since getting up to go to the bathroom is apparently too much of a chore. Not because there's a medical issue or she can't hold it.  Because she refuses to go when she is given an opportunity to go several times at school "if she doesn't have to go" and because she can't be bothered to ask the teacher if she can get up and go.

As any mom can imagine, wet pee pants + excrement in her underwear + no regular baths for days = multiple vaginal infections and one UTI.

She won't wash her face with the nice face washes I buy her despite the fact that she's breaking out already.  She won't wear any of the all natural deodorant we buy her, despite the fact that puberty is hitting and she's a very active person and she smells really bad by the end of a day. This one isn't the highest of my concerns; I didn't wear deodorant at her age either, but I don't think I needed it.  SHE DOES.

Guess what? SHE DOESN'T CARE. Because of course I'm a good parent and will take her to a dr and get her treatment and make the pain go away. During the REPEATED talks about what is good personal hygiene and why it's important, she explains that she doesn't think any of this is a big deal and that she doesn't care. She doesn't care if she makes her body sick because there is medicine for that. She doesn't care if she gets cavities because you can get fillings. She doesn't care if she smells bad.

Well guess what? I care. I care about taking the days off to take her to the dr. And the money on the prescriptions. I care about how badly she is treating her body. I care about not raising some dirty gerbil of a child.  I care about the filthy underwear in the laundry. I care about not spending every night fighting with her to take a shower and brushing teeth.  My god--what is this going to be like when she gets her period?!?!?!?!  She's going to be one of those girls who never changes her pad!

Her dad is useless on this. He just shrugs and says she's just a kid. I feel like at her age she should be able to do these basic things--wiping her butt clean, knowing that she should go to the bathroom "even if she doesn't have to go" because she will have the urge to go later, not peeing in her pants, showering and brushing teeth when she's at her other family's house even if they don't make her.

I guess her friends don't ever say anything to her, which is really a surprise. I keep expecting her to come home crying over having been teased. I keep hoping some peer pressure will encourage her to change her habits, but it's not happening.

Am I wrong? I'm just a step mom and she's my only one. Are my expectations too high that she'd have some basic hygiene skills down by her age?

I'm at my wit's end. As much as I fear it might be bad parenting, I'm really considering sitting her down and trying to shame her a little.  She has somehow gotten the idea that it doesn't matter to be clean. And having fairly serious and uncomfortable consequences don't seem to have done the trick. So would an old-fashioned "you have disgusting habits and you're gross and you should be ashamed" kind of thing be terrible? She's actually a pretty sensitive kid about most things and she is sort of a "pleaser." But all the nice gentle talk and reinforcement of good habits isn't doing squat. I really feel like if I sat her down and purposefully hurt her feelings over some of this that maybe that might work.  And, of course, I feel like the WORST PARENT IN THE WORLD for having just even written that sentence. Ugh. help me.

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