bathing

[ask2005]

i have a 10 month old daugther and she use to love baths and now all of a sudden after she was sick she screams everytime i go to take her for a bath all the way up until i take her out. what should i do?

[RevShirls]

Just persevere ask2005. Our wee girl was the same until recently. She is nearly 2 now. She was fine for the first few months and then she got a real fear of the bath (both her baby bath and our main bath). In order to reassure her when she was screaming I decided to bath with her - so I got into the bath with her.

It was awful for a wee while because she was screaming and crying so much but we persevered with some toys in the bath and the crying and screaming got less and less each time. We never made a fuss about it - just kept singing songs in the bath and playing with toys whilst trying to wash her (and her hair). Last week she started to enjoy it for the first time and had fun splashing around as well. All is well!

[smudge]

Apart from the usual bath toys - perhaps you could give her a little plastic tea set to play with. Children love pouring water & making cups of tea!

Also, you could put a battery operated cassette player in the bathroom & play her some musical or story tapes.

As she's being side-tracked, you could gradually start washing her hair, etc. Good luck.

[EssJay1]

My three children always enjoyed a really deep, warm bath they could almost swim in, right from birth. A complete waste of water, but as I say they all enjoyed it and can swim like fish now!  (Above and below water!)

[nrmatth]

with our daughter we made a big fuss of saying bye to the water as it went down the drain. and I'd put my toes in the drain and she'd copy me and learned that she didn't fit.of course at first we did this while she was out of the tub but now she bids farewell to the water every time. just like children don't learn depth until they start to crawl and walk they also don't realize their too big to fit down a drain. It would be scary to think you could end up down a drain you don't know were it goes. this helped well to flush the potty too.