How to Encourage Good Hygiene In Your Family
Whether it’s healthy skin or a gleaming smile, good hygiene is essential for everyone. However, no one is born knowing how to take care of themselves and focus on hygiene. They need to learn about it. As a parent, the responsibility falls on you to educate your kids about excellent hygiene from the moment they’re old enough to understand.
Bathing Daily
Everyone has had those days when they are too lazy to shower, but this shouldn’t become a habit. Daily baths are essential for eliminating the stink from working or playing outside all day, especially since you can never smell how terrible your body odor is. Encouraging daily showers for your kids–either in the morning or before bed–ensures they never develop body odor. It’s natural to sweat and smell after a big day, but this shouldn’t be continuous, so make sure your kids bathe every day whether they’re leaving the house or not.
Make Appointments For Them
Since your kids aren’t old enough to stay on top of their doctor and dentist appointments, you need to normalize these activities by booking appointments for them. You should take them to the dentist twice a year for checkups, while doctors’ appointments should be once a year for most kids and adults. The more they visit these places, the more comfortable they will be there and will accept it’s something they need to do when they grow up.
Make Time for Essentials
There are many essentials surrounding personal hygiene. Like bathing, you need to make time for these essentials, such as brushing their teeth, clipping their nails, and getting their hair cut. Every parent knows how much of a battle this can be, so learn how to make teeth brushing fun for your kids. As for other essentials, please do what you can to monitor the length of their nails and encourage them not to bite them. If their hair looks greasy and tangled, it’s time to get a trim, too.
Explain the Consequences
You can tell your kids to look after themselves, but that doesn’t mean they will follow through. While you’re tempted to assume that’s their decision, you don’t want them to suffer the consequences, so you should explain them to your kids. These consequences can include health issues like bad skin or damaged teeth. From there, they could face expensive medical bills, while the social aspect also cannot be ignored because no one wants to hang out with the kid who doesn’t wash.
Keep Educating Them
Parents should continue to educate their kids about hygiene as they grow up. After getting the fundamentals down, it’s time to talk to your kids about puberty when they approach that age. It may be awkward, but it will be much more awkward if your kids develop infections because they don’t know how to look after their changing bodies, so sit down with them and go through the things they may experience.
Good Hygiene
Establishing hygienic habits isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) challenging. Yet, kids who don’t learn to take care of themselves are more likely to ignore hygiene fundamentals, which could affect their health and social life, among other problems. The good news is that it’s never too late to embrace excellent hygiene.
These are great tips. I’m glad my daughter is getting more comfortable going to the dentist now.