When you were an infant, your mother or nurse bathed you, first by cradling you in her arm, and washing you with a warm washcloth, dipped repeatedly in a large bowl or other container of warm water,and perhaps a mild suds from a baby cleanser, or oil,or baby shampoo, that would not make your little eyes tear.Then later, you were immersed in that water, still cradled in those loving arms, and finally, you graduated into a baby bathtub, or an even larger bowl, or perhaps even the kitchen sink,where you actually sat up on your own.If she,(or he) did this job well and with gentle confidence, you learned from little on, that bath time is a good experience,and even joyful, punctuated by you with lots of giggling and splashing,once you reached a certain age.About the time you started walking,you grew too big for the kitchen sink.A real good indicator is, by the time you are capable of climbing into and out of the sink by yourself, you can no longer take a bath there! So, once again, you graduated to the actual bathtub. When my son came of this age, we lived in a little dinky house, with one bedroom, which possessed NO bathtub.We had a shower. I had two choices. To keep laboriously filling the baby bathtub, and lugging it to the kitchen table, so I could bathe him without killing my back from bending over too far, or to take him into the shower with me. It was a difficult choice,and a difficult time, for me. My baby was just as happy as a little toad to sit in his baby bathtub, and splash around, grinning, while I washed him, and rinsed him, and shampooed his hair.He loved it. I, on the other hand, did not love the number carrying all that sloshy water back and forth to the sink was doing on my body. The shower option wasn't much better. Imagine, if you will, how dreadfully uncomfortable it is to go naked into the shower with a naked baby in your arms,and to proceed to try to wash said baby, while wriggling, wet and slippery, while you struggle to clean all parts.On a scale of one to ten, the level of difficulty was ten,compounded by the fact that my baby HATED the shower.He did not like the bathwater falling from above his head,he did not like not being able to sit and splash,and he was terrified,once we were both wet, that I was going to drop him.That is instinctive, by the way, all children are terrified of falling. I got the picture, real quick. The second time I walked into the shower with him, and turned on the water, he began to scream, and turn all red in the face,and that was it.I turned off the shower,and dragged out the baby bathtub. Still, I had a problem, but the solution was simple.We moved. Well! I didn't say it was EASY. But in order to have a proper environment for a child, it is imperative that you have easy...make that workable access to bathing facilities for them, and for you. Sending him into the shower alone, was not an option.I don't know about your child, but my child wasn't capable of walking across a clean, bare floor,bone dry without falling down! I certainly wasn't going to allow him to slip and slide around in an archaic old bathroom, with a shower head and a drain that was supposed to be a shower.That,coupled with the obvious fact that children under age 5 or 6, depending on the child, should never, ever be left alone in the bath,made my mind up for me.So, we moved into a larger place, with a bathtub, and turned around my son's new hatred for the bath, back into an attitude of total delight.It is essential that you make sure your child loves to bathe, because the life long tendency is set up by the parent.He now loves not only a bath, but also a shower, because I was able to make that change quickly. I shudder to think what he might be like now, had I not heeded the warning signs and gone on insisting that he take showers. He might have turned out to be one of the unwashed individuals it has been my misfortune to come in contact with,whose fragrance precedes them.Or, to put it more bluntly,someone who has body odor. I am mystified by such people. How, in this day and age,does one grow up without learning the simple techniques of cleansing oneself? Are they victims of improper rearing? Did their mother never give them baths they enjoyed? Were they throwbacks, to the era when, in order to wash up, they had to go outside with a pitcher and a bowl, and draw water out of a cold cistern,take a bar of lye soap,and shiver while they washed, in order to get clean? It is possible. There are still homes, in rural areas, where there is no running water,and one must take sponge baths. I have had such experiences. I know what it is to have to be very determined to have a hot bath.It is a lot of work to drag ice cold water into the house, heat it on the stove,and pour it into a portable bathtub,and repeat the action seven times, just to have enough hot water to get clean.To say nothing of the amount of work involved in reheating that bath for several children, getting them all dry before they start to turn blue,and then to empty the tub, bucketful by bucketful. But the people I have encountered recently, now,do not have those kinds of drawbacks to everyday bathing. Most of them have only to walk into the bathroom, turn on the water,and get in. So why do they remain so pungent? Can't they smell themselves? Do they find it amusing that even their friends won't walk downwind of them? Don't they know that soap is cheap? Hasn't anyone ever introduced them to deodorant,anti-perspirant,after shave or perfume? Now, I know that in the vast configuration of things, this is only a small consideration. Only a part of the total life of a human being. But we were given noses,and sweat glands for a reason.Both should be responded to in an appropriate and timely fashion. If your life is so busy, that you have to make time to bathe, by all means, do it.If your family or co-workers give you bath items as gifts, they might be trying to tell you something. If, when you walk into the room, people back off from you, and hold their noses, they might be trying to avoid smelling you. And, finally, if the reason you don't take baths is because you don't have a shower, or you do, and prefer a bathtub,then do what I did. Move. If you don't appreciate what you have, then you'd better get what you can appreciate, and use it, to make us all more comfortable, and healthy.Last of all. If you are one of those individuals who doesn't care that they smell bad,or look dirty,grimy and greasy, then at least do the world a favor and find a job where you don't come in contact with others, and resign yourself to a lonely life, because most of us like a sweet smell about us, and enjoy seeing clean skin, hair and clothes...Or, buy yourself an industrial sized vat of fabreeze!
OH! By the way, Both a bath and a shower will get you just as clean, though some people don't like the " Idea of sitting in their own dirt", to quote a fanatic on the subject, but it is all in what you like.Either way you'll be clean...Okay?
And finally, should you not understand the whole purpose for keeping your body clean, remember, the human body comes in contact with millions of germs and bacteria every day,and sheds millions of skin cells,and secrets oils from surface glands.Now, consider scientifically the impact on the human body that likes to keep warm and moist, if those germs and bacteria are allowed to mingle with the waste cells and oils, in an ideal growth environment of warm moistness.The germs and bacteria will then grow,and that unclean body becomes a mobile center for illness and disease! It is an unhealthy situation for the person who does not wash, as well as for every person with whom that person comes in contact. Should you doubt any of this information, contact your local hospital, and question them on the way medicine was revolutionized by the simple act of keeping patients clean!
OUI?
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