Make Bathtime Easier with These 10 Tips
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Bathtime with babies and little kids can be many things: fun, relaxing, hectic, boring, etc., depending on your kid’s age, current mood, and general attitude toward baths. Have you developed any tips and tricks to make bathtime easier?
{related: how to level-up bathtime for kids}
First, I’ll share a few things we’ve done at our house to make our son’s bathtime easier:
1. Cushion your knees with one of those squishy kneeling pads that some people use for gardening or other home chores, like these. (I think I bought ours from the dollar section at CVS.) They make kneeling on the floor in front of the tub much more comfortable. This product is even fancier and more functional.
Stay tuned for some of our favorite products for bathtime!
2. For a kid old enough to stand when you get her out of the tub, buy a hooded bathrobe like this one. It’ll keep her warm without any effort on her (or your part) — when you’re getting out the hair dryer, and so forth — and it’ll start the drying-off process before you grab a towel.
3. Get a big mesh bag for toys, preferably one that you can hang in the bathroom. Our tiled shower walls have a somewhat rough texture, so we can’t use a toy organizer that attaches with suction cups (and I doubt they work very well, anyway). Instead, right now we have a beach bag like this one. We put the straps over the bottom of a shower caddy that is hung on a very secure and sturdy wall hook that uses screws, not a nail. I can imagine some potential safety issues with our setup, but it’s worked well so far.
Here are some more tips from working moms to help make bathtime easier at your house:
4. For a toddler who has grown too big for a baby tub and can sit up by herself, put her in a laundry basket in the bathtub so that she’s safely contained and can’t hit her head on the side of the tub. A laundry basket is also handy when you’re bathing a toddler and bigger kid together — that way, the older one can’t knock over the smaller sibling.
5. Use a baby bath or bath cradle that lets your baby lie in the water, rather than a platform tub or similar setup. Your kid will be warmer (and hopefully happier) by actually being in the bathwater. Here’s one with great reviews.
6. If your baby isn’t too steady while sitting, put a inch or two of water in the bathtub and have her lie down on a rubber bathmat — she might enjoy being out of the baby tub because of the extra room to kick her legs, etc. Obviously, keep your eyes on your baby at all times if you do this.
7. Get the right gear: bathtub crayons, foam letters, color tabs, a bath visor, a faucet cover, and baby bubble bath can help make bathtime go more smoothly. (Kat’s note: Both of my boys have always loved a glowstick bath! We just bought this 300-piece pack on Amazon.)
8. Play some kid-friendly music, either calming/relaxing or fun/upbeat. (You can always try the classic, “Splish Splash.”) For older children, put on something like Tumble, a science podcast for kids.
9. If your bath resister is old enough, let her take a shower instead.
10. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”: Just get into the tub with your kid!
Share your tips to make bathtime easier! Does your kid enjoy bathtime or hate it? If you have older kids, at what age did they start bathing or showering by themselves? What’s your favorite bath gear?
Picture credit: Pixabay
Popsicles. Obviously they have to be old enough and I get the no sugar added ones and they get them outside in the summer and blah blah blah, but this is my bribe and I will own it. The only place inside our house where a child can eat a popsicle is in the tub.
They never complain about getting in the tub because they know it comes with a popsicle. They get to play in there and eat them while I clean up dinner (door is open and I can glance in at them easily) and then when the popsicle is gone or melted, it’s time for business. I come in to help with soap, shampoo, rinse, getting out. By then they’ve usually soaked in the tub long enough to get the stink off.
Wait, do any of you blow dry your child’s hair??
Mom of three and my biggest tip is to not feel like you need to bathe your kids every day. We do weekly, plus truly dirty days (playing in mud, food in hair, poo explosion, etc). Otherwise it’s just a wipe with a washcloth at teeth brushing time.
Showering is much easier with little babies than a bath.
Tiny babies I wash in the sink. Lay a towel down. So much easier on your back.
Older but not sitting babies, do in the reclined tub but on the bathroom floor not in the tub. You don’t have to reach over the side, which is really where the pain comes.
Bath mats for traction are your friend. Get the extra long that fill up the entire tub floor.
With three kids in the tub, the whale faucet cover really is worthwhile (and I’m someone who eye rolled it for years).
Skip the cute towels; they usually aren’t 100% cotton so they aren’t as absorbent. A regular towel works fine.
We do baths in the master bathroom and set up a space heater in the master bedroom. Then we can corral all the kids in a warm, large space away from wet slippery floors.
My daughter loves bath toys – boats, cups that she can use for dumping water, etc. We recently discovered that she hates bubble baths. She loves the idea of bubbles and gets so excited to see them in the tub, but the act of being in the tub with bubbles was too much. We just had our first no-bubbles bath in a few weeks and it was so much more enjoyable!
Also, the cushion for your knees is a must!
My 3 and 4 year old daughters take a daily shower. While I’m starting the shower, they pick out their PJs. I brush their hair before they get in the shower to cut down on post-shower tangles. I play Disney music on my phone during shower time and we sing along. 2-3x a week I reach in there and wash their hair. Once a week I give them a good scrub down. On Sunday nights we play hair salon. I blow out their hair/put lip balm on them/trim their nails/let them play with my makeup brushes. Bath time used to be an utter nightmare until we started doing showers. Now I enjoy our time together. My children seem less stressed out, too.
Bad Mom Confession – I didn’t bathe my child by myself until she was 9 months old. H and I did it jointly the first few times, then it became his thing. Baby HSAL is almost 18 months now and we’re just now getting out of a three-month phase where she was terrified of the bath. Big relief. During the Great Bath Rebellion of 2017, we were down to one screaming bath a week, but otherwise we shoot for twice a week. Last fall I wanted to go up to three times/week but her skin got really dry so we cut back. We might try it again this summer when she’s outside more, but I think a daily bath for babies is overkill. Faces and bums, that’s all you need to worry about.
Has anyone found any good bathmats that will suction to slightly textured tubs? I’ve tried several with no success. For now we either go without or put a towel down.
Instead of buying a kneeling pad, I used to sit on the step stool my kid used to reach the sink.
We have a memory foam bath mat from Costco that is great for kneeling during bath time.
If you have a kiddo with sensitive skin (or a sensitive bum), skip the bubbles and use Epsom salts instead.
My one tip for tiny babies, especially ones who HATE bath time – instead of keeping them cold while you dry them off, do some skin to skin while you dry baby. It warms them up faster. I was never able to manage a slippery wet baby in the shower but it’s my favorite way to get kiddo cleaned up quickly now that she is stable on her feet.
Wow, I had no idea bath time could be so complex. My husband or I just bathed our kids in the bottom of a bath tub with one of those rubber non-slip mats down, no toys or anything. It didn’t take long. Definitely not every day unless needed. No hair drying. Kids started taking showers on their own at about 3-4 depending on kid. My husband taught my boys to use the shower by showering with them several times first.
Toddler bathrobe recs? All the ones I see are more for the 3 and up set.
My 6 y-o still loves hooded towels, which work better than robes in my opinion.
IKEA has a great, cheap hooded towel/cover up that we use a lot, particularly after swim class.
Our two year old went through periods of screaming bloody murder when we tried to get her hair wet. Swim lessons (just parent-baby classes getting used to the water, not much actual swimming) seemed to be helpful here–jumping into the pool was so fun that she eventually dealt with having wet hair and a splashed face, and having a tolerance to that in the pool translated (somewhat) to the tub.
My 2-year-old gets bathed every 2-3 days, depending on how much dirt/sand she gets in at daycare. I’m still loving the hooded towels that we’ve used since she was a baby. She always asks for her “hat” after bath time. Baths aren’t the issue for us; detangling her long hair AFTER bathtime is the part we both really dread. :)