Author’s practical guidance
Washing them when they can nearly do it themselves
Source named in the book: RIE (Gerber)
There is a stretch of about a year where a child can wash most of themselves and not quite all, and the parts they cannot manage are exactly the parts this book keeps saying belong to them.
Say this now
“You wash your penis. I'll do your back.”
Divide it out loud. Name the parts, not "the rest."
“I'm going to rinse between your legs now — ready?”
Narrate, then pause. The pause makes it help.
Do this
- Hand over one part at a time and do not take it back on a rushed evening.
- Narrate before you touch. Every bath.
- Give them the cloth for their own private parts as soon as they can hold it.
- Accept a worse job. Clean enough is the standard here, not clean.
- Check once a season whether they have outgrown what you are still doing.
Avoid this
- Washing in silence while looking at your phone.
- "You're too slow, let me." Takes back the exact skill you are waiting for.
- Doing it the same way at five as you did at two, without ever checking.
If it repeats
If they suddenly want privacy before you expected it, give it without comment — that request is a developmental step, not a mood. Stay within earshot for safety in water, and let the washing be theirs.
Why the book suggests this
There is a stretch of about a year where a child can wash most of themselves and not quite all, and the parts they cannot manage are exactly the parts this book keeps saying belong to them. Both things are true and they have to be held together.
The care tradition that argues this hardest asks for one thing: hand over each part as it becomes possible, and say what you are doing with the rest. Narrating costs nothing on a good evening and very little on a bad one, and it is what turns being washed into being helped.
From this collection
Same Words: Their Own Body
45 prepared situations in this family area.