Bath Terrors

[windinthemaples]

Graeme loves a few things: playing in the bath, drawing, and popping bubbles top the list. (So you can perhaps see just how great baths can be when I pull out the bottle of bubbles and the tub crayons.)

This week, I encouraged Daniel to give Graeme (who was covered in dinner) a bath. I stayed downstairs. This has probably only happened a handful of times in Graeme's life. Usually I give baths or our babysitter.

There was the splash of the tub filling and Graeme's happy footsteps as he raced around to pick out the toys he wanted to dump in there. (Plastic Ostara eggs and a bowl, probably.) Happy conversational tones and then blood-curdling screams. Daniel's anxious questioning, Graeme's repeated screams of "No! No! No! No!" in a sheer panicked, blubbering way.

I got upstairs and Daniel was soothing a towel-wrapped toddler who was red-faced and tear-streaked.

"Maybe the water was too hot for him", Daniel says.

I go to feel the water, that'd been sitting now for a few minutes, and it was HOT HOT HOT!

Graeme didn't have any burns, but it was obviously way hotter than any bath Graeme'd ever been in. Daniel says he'd happily climbed in and then, like a delayed reaction, started screaming.

We had no luck getting him back into that tub. I changed the water, climbed in there myself, mounded it with toys. No way. He whimpered and wailed, even when he could feel the water wasn't hot anymore.

So today, Graeme has marker all over his face, hands, feet, legs. I ask him if I can give him a bath (something he used to request daily!) and he says no. What about if there are toys? What about if Mama gets in, too? Eventually he says okay. I put a few inches of water in the tub (different tub! different apartment!) and the minute he's ankle deep in that totally tepid water, he started screaming in sheer terror. I couldn't calm him down or do anything but get him out of that tub. I tried washing him up in the sink, another of his former favorite play spots, and he acted the same way.

I know Daniel feels like a villain. I have to admit, I'm pretty upset about it, too. Not just the too-hot mistake but the parenting inequality that allowed for something that is so obvious to me to be so unknown to D. Mostly, I feel terrible for Graeme and unsure how long it will take to get him to trust water again--let alone restore it to its beloved status.

We both feel horrible. I guess Graeme does, too.

Comments

[seshen.livejournal.com]

When Alexandria was small, she liked to sit in the bath while the water was running and filling the tub. One time, she was happily ready, but the faucet had not been turned back from the showerhead. It came pouring down on her and she practically ran over me getting out. It took a good couple of weeks before she'd try it again from the start; the tub had to be filled ahead of time.

She got over it, and so will Daniel and Graeme.

[willow-cabin.livejournal.com]

Oh, the poor little guy. :/ *hugs to all three of you*

[radshaun.livejournal.com]

Awwww. Give everyone big hugs for me. Maybe if you put extra bubble bath in so that Graeme doesn't see the water?

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

Kaia hit a phase where she FREAKED about the drain in the tub at about that age. I coaxed her back to bathing by steps.

First, I used a fairly small tub (one of those pink washtubs from the hospital) on a towel in the kitchen. We upgraded to a Rubbermaid tough tote after a few days, and then I moved it into the bathroom, and then into the tub. We stuck with the small tub in the bathtub for a long time, mostly because I was jazzed about the water savings. Now she mostly just hops in the shower with me.

[mrsbrewer.livejournal.com]

Aw, poor baby. Since everyone else is sharing, I'll tell you that Dot went from loving baths to hating them for a time. I finally realized that she was crying because she would see the cup we used to rinse her hair. Once I got it out of the tub, things were so much better. I figure that by the time she's four or five, I might actually get all the soap out of her hair. Until then, well, who cares? Sometimes I just rub her hair with a wet washcloth and call it good.

I'm sorry that such a fun thing got ruined for him, but there is hope that he'll get back in the saddle!

[seshen.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I just rub her hair with a wet washcloth and call it good.

I just had to respond to this. When my older daughter was in college, her secret? "Febreeze, the shower of the working college student."

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

Ohmygosh, hon, I'm so sorry. ;-; *sending love*

I don't have any child related stories to it, save for when *I* was a kid. I had HORRIBLE chicken pox and was super feverish and really just very bad...I was around three. My parents made an oatmeal bath for me, and I stepped in the water and sat down. Everything began to BURN like I was on fire, and I screamed and leapt out of the tub and ran around the house until they could calm me down. It took me a little while to want to have a bath again, but then you couldn't get me out of the tub. And then, you know, I became a mermaid. ;D

I don't know if that helps or not? I'm just sending reassurance and love!!!

[neva-butterfly.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry. I think most children have a burned in the tub story--my sister learned to turn the knobs herself and turned on the water too hot. They are scared for a while and then slowly they forget and start to love the bath again. But I certainly understand your frustration that in all this time D hasn't given baths so honestly didn't know and didn't think to ask. I don't know what to say except that I send many happy-bath thoughts to Graeme and I hope D will now try to learn a few basics at least.