And you certainly don't need to use soap on your skin. I shower everyday but I only use soap occasionally. I do shampoo everyday that is because I have particularly oily hair.

DS5 gets a bath every other day in cold weather. No soap in general. Hair washed maybe twice a week.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wash DS's hair when it gets dirty, with food or mud, etc. Sometimes not for weeks, sometimes several times a week. He's 4.

My brother thinks it's disgusting not to shampoo every day. He learned that your skin needs to be cleaned with soap daily in med school. We disagree about this.

I have to agree w/this PP.

The scalp is just like the face...Just covered in hair. So by not washing your daughter's hair for those nine days, it is just as if you didn't cleanse their facial skin for nine days. Not healthy.

I have never been able to jump on the "do not shampoo daily" bandwagon myself.

If you are concerned about overdrying the hair, I suggest using moisturizing shampoo & conditioner as well as applying a leave-in conditioner after toweling off the hair.

But PLEASE no skipping daily shampoos or baths for that matter. Kids at this stage in life need to be taught good hygiene and excellent bathing habits.

Trust me, there is no harm or foul in doing this. Plus, they will have great skin in the future!

That's not correct. A preschooler age child does not need to be bathed every day. Obviously if they are rolling in dirt or playing outside etc they need a bath. We wash hands multiple times a day and wash faces at least twice a day if not more frequently when they get food on their faces but there is not reason every inch of their body needs to be cleaned every day. It will have no effect on their skin in the future except that if you bathe them daily and don't use tons of moisturizer you are making their skin dry which will NOT be great in the future.

To the PP with the brother who went to med school: I don't know what med school he went to but that's simply not true either. I went to med school too and we learned that pre-pubescent kids do NOT need a bath every day and not once in all 4 years of med school and all the books I had to read in that time did anyone or anything every say skin needs to be cleaned with soap daily. You need to wash your HANDS with soap multiple times a day but NOT every part of your body.

The reason adults need to bathe every day is because we perspire and it smells if we don't bathe or shower. Pre-pubescent children don't have that problem. It has nothing to do with health.

OP, as an adult I shower every day, if I have a particularly exerting day (go to the gym etc) I may even shower twice but I wash my hair twice a week. Every hair dresser I ever knew said it's much better for hair NOT to be washed every day. Every time you wash it you are removing the natural oil. Obviously it depends somewhat on the type of hair, some people have naturally very oily hair which should probably be washed more often so it doesn't look greasy but as long as their hair looks good and doesn't smell I think once per week is probably just fine.

One of my best friends owns her own salon. Her number one piece of advice to people to get your hair to look better:

Stop washing your hair everyday.

She washes her's twice a week, about every 3rd day.

However. I'd think that for a kid, it really does not matter. Wash it when it seems dirty, if it doesn't seem dirty, don't wash it. Pretty simple.

every time we bathe - about 3x/week? more often when she's playing outside a lot. i'm not wedded to it but she still has a tendency to smear food in her hair these days. my own hair generally looks better if i limit shampooing to no more than twice a week.

Girl with hair down to her to waist. She showers and washes her hair every single night!

I use to bathe my DD daily figuring the amount of germs and nastiness at preschool or daycare warranted cleaning. However, I've become paranoid about lice and one of the things I've read is that they prefer clean hair, so I've now dropped back to bathing her every other day or even every third day if she hasn't been doing anything particularly dirty or isn't super sweaty.

Hair is washed every time she bathes.

Every other day. It's every time she gets a bath because I only give her a bath every other day unless she gets dirty on her non-bath days.

She has very fine hair and it seems to get greasy looking if it's not washed. In fact, sometimes her bangs look a little oily by the end of a day so, if it's not a normal bath night, I add a bath so she has baths two days in a row.

4 year old boy. I wash his hair 1-4x a week depending on what he's done to it.

Anonymous wrote:I wash DS's hair when it gets dirty, with food or mud, etc. Sometimes not for weeks, sometimes several times a week. He's 4.

My brother thinks it's disgusting not to shampoo every day. He learned that your skin needs to be cleaned with soap daily in med school. We disagree about this.

I have to agree w/this PP.

The scalp is just like the face...Just covered in hair. So by not washing your daughter's hair for those nine days, it is just as if you didn't cleanse their facial skin for nine days. Not healthy.

I have never been able to jump on the "do not shampoo daily" bandwagon myself.

If you are concerned about overdrying the hair, I suggest using moisturizing shampoo & conditioner as well as applying a leave-in conditioner after toweling off the hair.

But PLEASE no skipping daily shampoos or baths for that matter. Kids at this stage in life need to be taught good hygiene and excellent bathing habits.

Trust me, there is no harm or foul in doing this. Plus, they will have great skin in the future!

Every day during the summer (sweat, sunscreen, bug spray) or bad pollen/allergy days.
In the winter we sometimes skip a night or two.

Daily.

Roughly every other day.

I wash DS's hair when it gets dirty, with food or mud, etc. Sometimes not for weeks, sometimes several times a week. He's 4.

My brother thinks it's disgusting not to shampoo every day. He learned that your skin needs to be cleaned with soap daily in med school. We disagree about this.

I think I washed it weekly or so at that age. My youngest likes me to scratch her head so she really loved shampoo time. I may have washed hers twice weekly. Their hair would get really dry, especially in Michigan winters if it was washed too often.

My dd's are 2 and 4. They bathe about every other day, and I wash their then too. I recently read an article about how overshampooing damages hair and can cause more oil. My girls have thick lovely hair. I have given them their baths this week, but have not shampooed their hair. It still looks great, doesn't smell, and looks clean. Not oily at all. I would love for my hair to be like this. We are on day 9...
In case it comes up, we are Caucasian.
Any other moms out there only wash the hair every 2 weeks or so? I know some may think its gross. But, if they are naturally not oily, then why not cut way back?