Around last March, Lilly suddenly decided she would no longer take baths. Not in an, "eh, no thanks, I have better things to do" kind of way but rather in a scream bloody murder and run out of the bathroom kind of way. We decided not to make a big deal out of it, try every once and awhile and figure it was a short phase and we'd all move on with our lives and our daughter would take baths again. Here it is August and we've successfully gotten her to take two short baths.
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| She would not let me take her diaper off, but she did sit down and splash a bit. |
We have no idea what caused the bath-phobia, she had no incident that sparked it (slipping, etc). One of our hypotheses is some claustrophobia - she would not go through tunnels or tube slides. I pulled back the other shower curtain so the other window was open and we've played with water around the tub, played throwing toys in the tub, etc. A classmate of mine from my reading classes this summer gave Lilly some bath toys from her daughters, which have helped her play with the tub. We don't think it is the water itself - she'll splash around in the water in the kiddie pool - even put her face in the water to blow bubbles, but she is leery of getting into lakes, especially when there are waves in the picture.
A few weeks or so ago, Nick had the brilliant idea of building a tower with the foam letters and get her to knock the tower down. That worked! She got in the bath and splashed and played around. We tried a bath a few days later - and the running crying out of the bathroom Lilly returned. Yesterday, she was willing to splash around in the tub again but had to keep her diaper on. We've also discovered we need to get her clothes off well before we bring her upstairs and fill the tub before she's in the room. So, if anything, we've made progress this summer. We're just glad we have a kiddie pool that she enjoys to keep her somewhat clean this summer. We may just have to invest in a smaller one for the living room this winter!
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| Baths are OK! |
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