i started an adult tap dancing two Saturdays ago. we're working on flaps and other basic stuff and combinations.

this is my teacher

my mother did this as well. She used to say every night at bath time "cleanliness is next to godliness"

Tap dancing always looks fun.

I hope I don't make it weird like that!

this is also him. makes me feel v privileged to have him teach me. at first i thought his effusive way of speaking was a put-on but it seems very true to him

Indeed

Mine were terrible sleepers when they were preschoolers so we did nightly baths for a lot of reasons including the all encompassing “bedtime routine” that I convinced myself was making a difference to how easily they went to sleep

But also they were typical rip shit n bust boys, so they were caked in dirt and Lord knows what else by the end of the day.

It is a waste of treated drinking water to run baths every day though. My eco-warrior friends were all very anti-daily-baths. And bathed their kids in baby baths until they were 7 or something, so as not to waste water

You could always just bathe them in kerosene like Australian care home residents.

why not teach them to shower?

1 year olds or home care residents?

my mom made me bathe every evening; i still like a good night shower.

she'd also have me make my lunch and pack my backpack to make it easier to get me out the door. i took it up a notch and would sleep in my school clothes. just had to wake up, eat cereal, and brush my teeth.

I didn't even realize that there was any question about the benefits of a nightly hygiene routine. And the sense of obligation a parent should have to provide one. A woman on that post said she had only bathed her 4 year old about 6 times in their entire life. She wasn't even ashamed enough to post that anonymously.

that's p gross. she either has a mental disease, a maid to do that work for her, or just hates kids. some people just don't deserve children. kids are people, too, and deserve respect!

For most people, I don't think that showering every day is necessary, but one should shower more than twice per week and definitely more than six times per lifetime.

Maybe kids need to shower every day because they get dirty quicker. I dunno. It's been a while since I've been a kid and I'm not around very many kid so I don't know how quickly kids get dirty.

yeah adults who are not actively sweating do not need a daily shower, but kids are fucking disgusting

The people I knew who didn’t bathe their kids daily didn’t dispute that it was a good practice in terms of hygiene - they just felt it was unsustainable and unnecessary - like having more than one car per family, etc.

They’re all vegan now and ride expensive e-bikes and drive BMW EVs and humblebrag about the academic scholarships and internships their kids have been offered

I was too exhausted for any of that so I just bathed my kids every day with drops of lavender essential oil in the bathtub and then laid them to sleep in bed linen I washed with drops of lavender EO in the wash, and kept all the “big lights” off after night fell

It was a hard time

Their kids were just more sedentary and laid back maybe. My kids were just so…active all the time. And so dirty. And so awake. The nightly baths were just worth a try

I didn't realize adults don't find a daily shower necessary, too. Am I....too clean? I don't wash my hair every day because the shampoo will wreck it if I do that, but I absolutely without fail take a nightly shower, even if I was inside all day. I never thought that was excessive or unusual, this is fascinating and a little distressing to learn that this is uncommon.

Kids do unsanitary things while hanging around other kids that also do unsanitary things, so in my mind it is non negotiable that they bathe before getting into a clean bed. And like vix (and all parents) know too well, the sacred Bedtime Routine has bathing as a centerpiece to exhaust everyone involved to the point of collapse.

this discussion is moot for anyone living in the tropics. it's quite common to shower even twice a day in very humid areas.


i shower every day but might skip a day on a weekend, especially if i don't go anywhere.

now that i work out, i shower probably 5x a week. but before that, it was not quite every other day. if i haven't been sweating and don't smell or feel gross, i don't see the point

i think shower frequency is more of a mental/routine game than anything. i fucking love showering and feel gross if i don't every day. often i'll shower twice a day. but if i am traveling and sleeping somewhere strange i don't feel as dirty or the need to shower as much, might go every other day. and if i'm camping i don't really feel dirty unless i actually get dirty. so anyway we do the baby boy a couple times a week.

It seems like every few months, someone does a poll along the lines of "do you wash your legs in the shower" and the results are consistently horrifying. Further details of particular methods and areas of washing are always similarly of great concern. So, not surprised folks don't bother keeping their kids halfway clean. And if they do give them regular baths, it's probably not done in a hygienically sufficient manner.

as already established, i only wash my ass after 2+ days of intense ass burning

ugh did no one watch this charming video of my teacher?


he's intimidating in the flesh but i love it. i actually like tough yet not mean teachers.

He seems like he'd be pretty irritated at student mistakes! Do you guys tap to music yet?

we do. he shows us steps and then we put it to music. he points out mistakes but not in a bad or mean way. kinda mocks how we look or sound when we mess up.

he does mention his own teachers (informal) weren't so nice to him (tough love) and questions out loud whether he should be mean to us. He can't though because it's mostly white women.

I super like people who are kinda tough when it comes from a good place. i commute a bit to get there.

He seems very jolly and enthusiastic, but with a serious side. I imagine he'd be a good teacher.

i'm the same way...maybe that's why i like him. maybe i'm not jolly but i am way more positive outwardly than i really am. he always razzes me and i'm not sure if it's because i am being singled out in a positive or negative way.

Just roll with it, I guess. I'm sort of the opposite, people sometimes assume I'm down or in a bad mood when I'm actually feeling fine. Maybe I have a dour default expression or something.

I wouldn't say that showering every day is excessive. I mean, it's not crazy or pathological or unusual or anything. It's just that, for a lot of people, they can remain perfectly hygienic only showering every other day or sometimes going a couple of days without showering or something.

Of course, that won't apply to coal miners, people who sweat more, etc.

And even if somebody is part of the population that can get away with showering every other day, I wouldn't think they are some kind of freak for choosing to shower every day, anyway.

I keep on hearing about this phenomenon of straight men who think it's gay to wash their ass. I've never encountered anybody who has professed this attitude themselves, but I go online and see women talk about encountering men who turned out to be anti-ass washing.

It seems too crazy to be true to me, but I did once come across an Andrew Tate video where he says that men shouldn't cook. IDK why, but cooking and ass-washing just seem to go together for me. If you categorically reject one, you're probably against both.

Also, even though I've read things that say you shouldn't scrub yourself while showering because you don't want to abrase the outer protective layer of your skin, I still use a loofah nonetheless because I don't feel clean if I don't scrub. Like what the fuck am I supposed to do, just rub a bar of soap over my body like they do in those Dove commercials?

When I've tried the "don't scrub" thing, what I could only assume was dead skin and/or dirt would ball up on my body while applying my post-shower body lotion.

It might be that a loofah is sufficiently gentle to leave your exoskeleton intact, though, right? Going at it with a pumice stone, on the other hand...

I assumed that this conversation was a weirdly delayed reaction to everybody shitting on Mila Kunis that time.

Surely allowing Ashton Kutcher to contribute to your kids' DNA is worse than only bathing them every few days during a lockdown.

Mom groups are great reading, no lie. Lots of not-so-hidden gems such as this.

“Natural” birth vs Caesarian-section, circumcision, whether or not you “cry it out”, breastfeeding vs. bottlefeeding, discipline methods, piercing ears and food choices (esp. sugar) were big battlegrounds in mom groups when I had preschoolers.

I remember one wise mother saying to me, nobody will still be asking you about any of this shit when the kids are 5+ and nobody will be able to tell which choices you made, by then. So try not to sweat it too much. It was good advice

But yeah the reading is pretty good sometimes, for sure

I can see her logic because he is beautiful looking and on paper you’d think she’s smart enough for both of them. I hope it worked worked out that way.

Some additions: vaccines, baby-led weaning vs purees, daycare or not, medicating fevers or not, co-sleeping, "gentle parenting", food allergens....so much to fight about. I check them weekly for the shit show! I wasn't expecting bathing to be a hot topic, though

It does not work out that way

My oldest will be 6 this summer, and the topics just get replaced but the attitudes are the same. Homeschool vs public vs private school, discipline, medicate their ADHD or not, are they in enough or too many extra curriculars, sleepovers, friends of the opposite sex, it never ends. I rarely engage in the discussions but find them entertaining until someone gets bullied.

Well it might - and a lot of IQ comes down to how kids are raised so she’ll be able to maximise that bit. Do you just mean there’s no gene for intelligence that is dominant?

I mean you can't eliminate one parent's undesirable biological traits through nurture