Help with showering a terrified child

[Teri7489]

My dd is 2 and ds is 5 months. We recently moved from a flat with a bath to a house with a shower so my daughter has never been in one. She quite literally scream the place down when she realises shes going in. So far we have tried:

me taking her in
husband taking her in
filling baby bath and sitting it in the shower but turning shower off
using dolly and toys to cheer her up
and simply just letting her cry

What can we do? She is too big for the baby bath and cant keep having her scream like mad. Also dont want ds sensing her anxiety and have him scared. Hes fine with it as hes still really small xxx

 

[ElmaWG]

I have no advice, sorry. My 3 year old is also scared of the shower, but luckily we have a bath. You might try posting in the toddler forum.

 

[Babybump87]

My DD is terrified of the shower too!! We do have a bath though so don't bother with shower.

Sounds like your doing all the right things. Have you tried getting in with her?. Might just be that she needs more time to adjust .

 

[SpringCrane]

Can you get a showerhead that you can detach and hold with your hand? She could hold it herself and gain some control?

 

[sil]

We do not have a bath in our house either. My ds is 2.5 and we had bought a larger blow up inflatable tub for him that we place in the bottom of our shower stall to use.

 

[sil]

We have this one. It's big enough for my 2yr8month old to sit in and he is 90th centile for height and 75th for weight.

Secure Transitions Inflatable Baby Tub (Pastel Colors - Sea) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015HULC2M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_1nVUwbJY5130Z

 

[Teri7489]

Thanks everyone. I forgot there was a toddler section as im always on this one! lol. Will give the inflatable tub a go. Will try anything at this point. Have tried holding her, also tried kneeling down and taking the shower head off but she just clings on for dear life and screams. Neighbors will soon hate us with the noise she makes xxx

 

[SarahBear]

One solution would be to shower her less. Violet had a very strong aversion to the bath and to the shower for quite some time. We just hardly ever bathed her and when we did, it was quick. Kids don't have nearly as much body odor as adults, so just wipe her down as needed and occasionally do a good wash in the shower and make it quick. After about three, Violet's ability to reason increased a good bit. This really helped with both establishing the expectation and problem solving through the pieces she was scared of. As it turns out, she doesn't want water in her ears when washing hair. Because of her increased reasoning skills, we were able to come up with a solution together and she is able to manage her fear/discomfort while hair washing happens. It didn't work right away, but we were able to work through it and the last time I washed her hair, we had no major issues.

 

[Spudtastic]

My dd was scared off the shower too. I don't know of this will help but she started to like the shower because of the shower at the swimming pool.

We had swimming lessons so there were a few other kids and these two kids loved the shower. Because the other kids were in the shower my daughter wanted to go in too. It also helped that it was a nice warm shower as dd was cold after swimming. Could you try the swimming pool perhaps with a friend who has a kid who likes the shower?

 

[Teri7489]

Thanks ladies. Thankfully (in a way) she is only showered once a week due to her eczema which gets worse the more she is bathed. Swimming again causes flare ups of her eczema so isnt really an option. Might just warn new neighbours so they dont think im a bad mummy torturing my kids lol xxx

 

[UponAStar]

Commenting a little late but we had this same issue with my DS.

What worked for us was getting that "bath tub finger paint" and letting him play with it both while the shower was on and off. I also shower with him most of the time.

Also, if you haven't already, pay attention and adjust the pressure that the water comes out of the shower head at. Half the issue for us ended up being that DS hated the water hitting him. Adjusting how hard it came out and positioning the shower head so the water hit the wall instead of DS directly made a big difference.

Best wishes!