How to Give Your Child a Bath

In order to ensure the harmony of your household, you must only bathe your children when absolutely necessary, or once every couple of months. Of course, there are exceptions, such as when you’ve got company coming over, or if the government sends a representative by the house to question your parenting methods.

This type of sporadic bathing is an ideal situation for all parties involved. Kids love being stinky and dirty; it’s a status-symbol for them. To a child, being dirty is a sign of life experience and maturity, kind of like iPads and gourmet coffee for us, only less pompous and douchebaggy.

Sometimes visitors just drop by the house though, and those without children probably won’t understand the social complexities of your filthy two-year-old. In these cases, lying is necessary. If a houseguest comes by your home unexpectedly and mentions anything about the smell emanating from your children, don’t panic. Just smile, nod and blame it on the dog. If you don’t own a dog, you should adopt one solely for this purpose.

When you’ve had enough of your stinky child and decide that it’s bath time, make sure to do some preparations first. Fill the tub with water heated to exactly 99.48 degrees. This is absolutely crucial to a successful bath. If you deviate from this number at all, there are dire consequences: too cold and your child will go into hypothermic shock; too warm and your child will spend the entire bath peeing on your arm.

Once you’ve got the bathwater at the correct temperature, you’ll need to load the tub with toys, and I mean LOAD it. Get enough toys in there so that you’ll actually have to make room for your child. Children won’t bathe in a tub that isn’t the exact equivalent of a Toys R’ Us aisle, so just roll your kid’s toy box into the bathroom and dump it. It doesn’t matter that none of these toys were actually “designed” to be put in a bath, and for that matter are probably “dangerous” if they get wet. That’s what lawyers are for.

It’s usually not difficult to coax a child into a tub full of water. Kids are genetically programmed to be attracted to any substance which they can use to make a colossal mess. Once you’ve got him in there, the fun really begins.

Trying to bathe a child is not unlike trying to bathe a cat. He’ll scream, he’ll cry, he’ll claw you, and he’ll try to climb the walls in a desperate attempt to escape the shampoo lather. By the time you’ve got him reasonably clean, most of the water from the tub will be in your clothes and you’ll have intelligent mildew colonies living on your bathroom walls.

It’s a law of Nature that your children will become dirty again after you’ve bathed them, usually within about twenty seconds. As a responsible parent, you should cover your children’s skin with Armor-All or Thompson’s Water Seal after every bath. This way, you can simply hose them down whenever they get dirty.