Bathing

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering how often your charges/children have baths. I've worked for quite a few families and many have baths every night, from babies to elementary schoolers, and now I'm working for a family where the 2yo has baths every couple of days and the baby only when he gets dirty with sweat or spit up. What has been your experience?

[Anonymous]

Bathe every day. Don't be disgusting.

[Anonymous]

When they were babies, every other day. As they got older/dirtier, baths every day.

Now at 3 and 4.5, it's every day because they play hard and get dirty each day.

[Anonymous]

99% of the families I have worked for usually do a nightly bath.

[Anonymous]

Babies do not need to be bathed daily. Heard this from our pediatrician, nurses when DD was born, teacher of our infant care class, friend's father who is a dermatologist, etc., etc. Daily bathing strips baby's sensitive skin of its natural oils, making them more prone to dryness and worse. I am sure there are exceptions where a baby should be bathed frequently, but generally speaking, 1-2x a week is plenty, according to the experts!

[Anonymous]

Are the parents lazy?

[Anonymous]

Babies 1-3X per week until they start really eating solids, then nightly but only do soap 1-2X per week (just rinse off the food the other nights), then as toddlers do soap nightly but only wash hair 1-4X per week depending on hair type.

[Anonymous]

No o e needs a bath everyday unless they are dirty or smelly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Babies do not need to be bathed daily. Heard this from our pediatrician, nurses when DD was born, teacher of our infant care class, friend's father who is a dermatologist, etc., etc. Daily bathing strips baby's sensitive skin of its natural oils, making them more prone to dryness and worse. I am sure there are exceptions where a baby should be bathed frequently, but generally speaking, 1-2x a week is plenty, according to the experts!

This. Butt and face/neck get washed everyday multiple times. We do bath twice a week. Unless there's a reason she's extra dirty. 6 months old. Pediatrician told us not to over do it on the baths due to her sensitive skin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No o e needs a bath everyday unless they are dirty or smelly.

My 12 month old charges are dirty (and therefore smelly) every day. Even if we don't go outside, visit a sandbox, or fingerpaint or anything particularly messy, they eat three meals and self-feed and get food in their faces, clothes, arms and legs and in their hair. It is much gentler on thwir skin for me to wipe only the "big chunks" and then rinse them at rhe end of the day than for me to try to scrub all of that off daily. Add in the fact that they nearly always have paint, sunscreen, bug spray, playdough, etc. in the mix and daily baths become a necessity. But we only do soap twice a week.

[Anonymous]

We did almost every day, missing a few occasionally.