Instructions for my Husband: The pool and the bath are not one in the same

A big thank you to Nicole Yontz for being a guest instructor here today and explaining to her husband the finer points of distinguishing a trip to the pool from actually giving a child a bath.

Nicole is a stay at home mom in Arizona and a contributing parenting writer for WhatToExpect.com. She writes a personal blog at TheBetterHalfBlogs.com, and you can also find Nicole on Facebook and on Twitter so go say hi!

Dear Sweet Husband,

You’re a wonderful man that I love dearly with all my little heart. But. Yes, but. There are a few things we need to clarify here: one of them being the bathing habits of our child. You might want to have a seat because I’m about to throw some knowledge on you…

Swimming in the pool is not the same as swimming in the bath.

The other day when I asked you to bathe our offspring and then you didn’t, rationalizing that she was clean enough after having been in the pool for hours and hours, was the day that I realized we had a problem. You see there are serious fundamental differences between these two bodies of water that I will now outline for you.

POOL:
• Is filled with water
• Makes hands and feet pruney
• Contains chlorine

BATH:
• Is filled with water
• Makes hands and feet pruney
• CONTAINS SOAP

As you can see from my bullet points, yes, both the pool and the bath contain water and they both make little hands and feet pruney. I can see how you could get confused, I really can. However, the last point is the most important; the pool contains chlorine and the bath has this amazing stuff called soap. Chlorine is meant to clean germs and bugs out of the pool; it, however, does not clean toddlers.

So I hope I cleared up any misconceptions you may have had previously and I look forward to a clean and good smelling toddler in the future.

Love,
Your Adoring Wife

PS: If you need some tips for making bath time fun, check out WhatToExpect.com.

Thanks again Nicole for adding this important instruction to our growing list!

To read all the instructions for husbands, click here.