Fewer Tears at Bathtime

For us, bathtime for the kids is always something of a mixed bag. The boys love splashing around and playing in the water, but actually being soaped and rinsed…not so much.

The baby is too young to understand that tipping one’s head back is the best defense against soap-in-the-eye, so some spluttering and whining is always to be expected. And the four-year-old is just so nervous about the whole process that he can’t sit still. We usually give him a washcloth to cover his eyes with, but with all the wiggling and shrieking, the cloth itself ends up wet and soapy.

One day I happened upon a solution that has made bathtime a lot easier.

It's all fun and games until they see me coming with the soap.

I was pondering the fact that baby shampoo and soap are often the same thing, when my eye wandered to one of those mini shower puffs that we had gotten in some gift basket or another but never used. Could a mini-puff be used to wash hair? I wondered. The answer is yes!

If you put a little soap on the puff and then dip it in the water, it can be used to wash your child’s hair without pre-wetting it. Because you are using much less water overall, there are no drips and it is way easier to control where the soap goes.

Now, I have boys and their hair is short, but I imagine the same process could be used on long hair if you spread one palm out under the hair and wash it in long strokes that go only one direction.

Rinsing can still be a bit of a problem, but I’ve found that the puff, once clean of soap, can hold enough water to rinse out the bulk of the shampoo. When it’s time for a final clean water rinse, there’s very little soap left to sting sensitive eyes.

If you don’t have a small shower puff or two kicking around your home, they can be purchased for about $1 apiece at the grocery store. You could also try getting your kids excited about their next bathtime by letting them choose their own puff.