How to Teach Your Child How to Take a Shower

Proper hygiene is extremely important. Not only does it help to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but it also helps to promote self confidence. For the first few years of your child's life, you took care of his hygiene for him. Now that he is growing older, it is important for him to learn how to do the job himself. Teaching your child how to transition from you giving him a bath to taking a shower on his own is just one of the steps in teaching proper personal hygiene.

1. Begin by teaching your child how to turn the shower on. Show him which knob operates the hot water and which operates the cold water. Demonstrate how to turn on both knobs to create warm water.

1. Teach your child how to enter the shower and properly close the door or curtain behind him. Properly closing the door will prevent a flood on your bathroom floor.

1. Explain the importance of getting his entire body wet before he begins cleaning himself. Tell him that being wet will help to create a lather with the shampoo and soap, and that the lather is what will get him clean.

1. Show him how to wash his hair. Help him pour a quarter-sized drop of soap on his hand. Instruct him to put the soap on his hair and work it in with both hands. Explain the importance of making sure all of his hair is shampooed.

1. Explain to him how to rinse his hair clean. Tell him to place his hair under the shower faucet so that the water can rinse the soap out. Tell him to use his hands to help remove the soap while rinsing. If he's worried about getting shampoo in his eyes, tell him to keep his eyes closed while he rinses his hair.

1. Show your child how to wash his body. Explain that he should rub the soap over his body, creating a lather, in order to clean himself. Show him how to brace himself, using the wall for support, when it is time to wash his feet.

1. Instruct him to rinse the soap off of his body by standing under the shower until the soap is gone.

1. Turn the shower off. Provide him with a dry towel and show him how to dry off his hair and his body when he is done taking a shower.

Tips

Instead of using the bar of soap directly on his body, you can teach your child to create a lather using a washcloth and a bar of soap. He can then use the washcloth to clean his body.

Tips

Keep a dry towel handy in order to wipe away soap or water that gets in his eyes.

Warnings

Supervise your child until he is comfortable and confident taking a shower on his own. He could potentially scald himself with hot water, slip and fall or hurt himself in some other way.