Bathing a toddler is important ingredient in keeping your child clean and healthy. This article will focus on steps and precautions that we follow when bathing our toddler that you can use with your own child. Once your child hits the toddler years and is mobile, they tend to become much dirtier and messier and bathing them is increasingly important. Giving your child a bath can also be a part of their nighttime routine and help settle them down before going to bed. For reference, we use our adult bathtub to bath our child.
Bathing Steps:
Water temperature is very important. If the water is too hot or cold and uncomfortable for your toddler, they will not be happy. We use warm (not hot) water.
The water should not be too deep. A couple of inches of water are usually plenty. Also, having some toys available for the toddler to play with in the tub helps keep them happy and calm.
To scrub your child, use a kid friendly liquid soap or body wash squeezed onto a wet washcloth. Use the soaped washcloth to wash their body and then rinse off the excess soap. We use either a cup or the rinsed washcloth to rinse the soap off our toddler.
Critical areas to always wash are your child’s face, hands, and bottom. Cleaning their face and hands gets rid of germs and dirt. Washing their bottom reduces the chances of diaper rash.
Save washing their bottom for last and once you use the washcloth on their bottom or other privates, set it aside and don’t use it again until you wash it. We take two washcloths to bath so we have one to use after the bottom scrub.
To wash your toddler’s hair, use a children’s shampoo that won’t sting their eyes. To start, tilt their head back and pour water over their head to wet the hair. Then work the shampoo in the wet hair. You probably need to use less shampoo than you think. Finally, tilt their head back, shield their eyes with your hand and rinse the shampoo out by pouring water over their head again. Have a dry towel handy to wipe away water and shampoo that gets in their face or eyes.
Once your toddler is washed up, take them out of the tub and dry them off with a towel. Be sure to thoroughly dry the diaper area before putting on their diaper to help prevent diaper rash.
Precautions:
Do not turn your back on a toddler in the tub. A child can drown very quickly in only a small amount of water. If you need to, bring the phone into the bathroom if you need to answer calls so you don’t leave them alone in the tub.
Only use an adult sized bathtub to give your toddler baths if the child can easily and steadily sit by themselves without support. Use an infant tub until this point.
Even when sitting a bathtub can be a slippery place. You may want to consider a no slip mat or some other method of keeping your child from slipping in the tub.
Do not let your toddler stand in the tub. Again, the tub is a very slippery place and a standing toddler is likely to fall.
If you tub is arranged where there is a chance your child could hit their head on the spout you may want to investigate spout covers to protect them.
Other Suggested Articles:
Terrible Twos
The not so wonderful world of Terrible 2’s
Toddler Indoor Activities Outside of the House
Activities for rainy days outside of the house
The Male Glass Ceiling
A dad’s musings on parenthood
