Clean your kids!

To shower or not to shower.

This is not a normal question, is it?  In my house it is the million dollar question.  I have children, well, really one child in particular, who does not like to bathe.  She never has.  Not as a baby, not as a toddler, not ever.  Okay, I will give her the toddler years because she enjoyed a long bath where she could trap me in the bathroom with her, but I could not ever let water go on her head without the scream heard round the world.

This kid is 10 years old now.  She will spend 25 minutes getting her hair "perfect" before a soccer game.  Seriously, perfect in a way I could not manage.  We are talking not one single bump to be seen perfect.  She analyzes her face, hair, arms, legs regularly.  She monitors the amount of hair on her legs and reports it to me more often than I can recount.  She is the most amazing sweet loving kind girl I have ever met, but she hates to bathe.

We get about one shower a week from her.  Could I make her shower daily?  Oh, of course I could.  I am not that Mom that lets the kid run the house.  My kids have told me I am one of the strictest Moms compared to their friends.  But, seriously, there are some things I can no longer battle with on a daily basis!  There are times when you just have to say she has to get this figured out herself.  Showering became that thing.

I used all of my Mommy brain on trying to get her to want to shower.  I gave her threats, I told her that her friends showered every day, I did it all.  She did not care.  And, I could no longer fight the fight.

So, I have the perfectly groomed girl who doesn't want to shower.  I am counting on the fact that peer pressure will win (just in this circumstance, I certainly do not want to be on an episode of 16 and pregnant).  She showers like a champ at her friends houses, at her grandmother's house and any other house but ours.

You have to think that middle school will make her shower more, right?  One day she might even shower before school???  One more year, and we hit middle school, here is to showering more frequently!