Today, one of my readers commented in one of my posts and raised a very interesting point, which got me thinking hard. She said that my kids should be able to take their baths themselves by now. Personally, I feel that Alycia (4 years old) and Sherilyn (1 week shy of her 3rd birthday) are still too young to know how to bathe themselves properly. Even if I let Alycia off the leash and let her learn to bathe herself, I will still stand inside the bathroom to supervise her, guiding her what to do but definitely not Sherilyn. If I let Sherilyn off the leash and give her a tad freedom, she will definitely get herself in trouble. Since young, she’s really very inquisitive, curious, mischievous, daring, not afraid of strangers and thus, prone to accidents. She has given me far too many heart attacks and heart stopping moments that I am paranoid whenever I leave her alone anywhere. Once, I went out of my bedroom for less than 1 minute and Sherilyn went into my bathroom and played with the water from a huge pail and got herself all wet. That really freaked me out and I really learnt a lesson there. She could have been drowned. I’ve since fixed a latch to lock my bathroom door from outside whenever no one is using the bathroom. Another time, she got her left thumb squashed and broken by a steel door in the kitchen when my maid and I were busy with something else.
Maybe I pamper and spoil my kids too much and still treat them like babies but my kids are really too precious to me coz I went through an extremely difficult time to have them. On the flip side, maybe it’s time for me to teach them to be more independent since I will be having a 3rd baby very soon and can’t afford to find the time to spoonfeed them in every single task.
I’d love to hear from parents out there – at what age do you allow your kids to bathe themselves, to go to the toilet (pee and poo) and do other chores themselves without any adult supervision?
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