Cleanliness, as a concept, just doesn’t seem to be apprehensible to our children. Many is the time we have been required to inform them that rubbing one’s face with a wash cloth is a means, not an end, the actual goal being to remove dirt and debris from the face, and that one might look in the mirror during or after washing to verify the success of the effort. Repeatedly, this is a revelation.
The other night I was tasked with helping Alice with a shower1. Naturally she had to poop right before hand. Rather than deal with the wiping issue2 I sent her in to the shower to get clean there. I told her to hold her butt cheeks apart to she could get clean. I didn’t expect to have to tell her to put her butt under the water as part of this process. It only took me two tries to achieve this. The first resulted in Alice showing me her butt while managing to get under the shower without any water actually arriving on her posterior. I had to explain that water was an important part of the cleaning process and therefore she needed to get the water to the place to be cleaned. She laughed brightly at this and said “Oh!”. Who would have guessed that?
1 Alice, who not so long ago acquiesced to showers only under duress or emergencies (such as a shower in the middle of the night after a containment failure) now refuses baths and insists on a shower.
2 A whole ’nother issue I will write about at some point.