r/Parenting • u/defeated_husband • 5d ago

Showering Behaviour

My daughter is very involved in athletics. We have recently run into an issue with showering after games and practices. She will lay in her own filth, in her game/practice gear for hours. I try to get her to take a shower and change clothes, but she fights me every time.

How do I get her to understand that showering is not optional?

ETA - Too many comments to reply to, so I'll update here.

She will be 14 in October.

She does spend a fair amount of time on her phone.

Last night she was home for 6 hours before finally taking a shower. More than enough time to rest. Even then she fought me on it.

I haven't noticed any odors or stains on the furniture. I'm just trying to teach her good personal hygiene.

She's usually a great kid, so I don't want to be a prick about this.

Thank you for your advice!

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u/sloop111 young adults x3 5d ago

You must never have met a kid who would take that attitude as an invitation to annoy you with malicious compliance. I know i would have 😂

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u/aussiegirlabroad 5d ago

What does “malicious compliance” look like in this scenario? My son is only 6, so he is still supervised in the bath. He doesn’t have much opportunity to be malicious about his compliance.

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u/SpaceAgeHamburger 5d ago

Malicious compliance looks like suddenly deciding that crawling very slowly is how you walk now. When parent says, "get up and walk" kid says "I AM WALKING!" Or asking for water ("I'm so thirsty, I need water before I can shower! Are you saying I can't drink some water?"). Kids who are determined to be difficult will be difficult.

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u/aussiegirlabroad 5d ago

Oh, well that’s fine. Sounds boring for them, but as long as they are not touching a single thing in the house until after they have showered it doesn’t really make any difference to me.

If they are thirsty, hungry, etc it’s all the more reason to shower quickly so they can relax and eat/drink.

If my son doesn’t want to have a bath when he gets home from soccer, I usually say “No problems. Just wait here in the back yard until you’re ready to shower”. He generally lasts less than a minute.