Make Your Baby Shower With the “Hokey Pokey”

This weekend I went camping for my 5 year old daughter. We had our own shower, but there was no bath for miles around. It was clear to me that it would not take a shower, so I made sure that she had taken a bath before we went home, and I thought that we could survive the weekend with baby wipes and the like. But one day she played in the mud and became dirty, and when I wiped her feet before bed, she said dreamily: “I would like to take a shower.”

I remembered getting her 3-year-old brother to start showering after swimming lessons — singing Hokey Pokey — and I thought I needed to repeat this experiment. Will it work twice? (Spoiler: Yes.)

If you need to freshen up, Hokey Pokey looks like this:

You put your right hand in

You reach out your right hand

You put your right hand and you shake it all

You make a Hokey Pokey and turn around

That’s the whole point!

How to actually do it

Here we take advantage of the natural curiosity of children. When they see a shower, they may be afraid to bury their face in it, but they are curious about what it would be like to stick their hand in.

So remember, we are not forcing anything, we are just creating an opportunity to be curious. I highly recommend telling your child ahead of time that you will make him feel the shower, but you will not require him to wet his face. (This is the scariest part, and you can always wash your faces in the sink later.)

I do like this:

1. When the child is away from the shower, turn it on and point the shower head towards the corner of the cubicle, if possible.
2. Adjust the temperature. When everything is perfect, call your child.
3. Dip your hand in the water and say something like, “Oh, right, it’s not too hot.” Ask them to feel the water with their fingertips.
4. Then you chant, “You put your right hand, you put out your right hand …”
5. Repeat with the other hand.
6. Then one foot, then the other.

Here we come to the most difficult part. If the child is just dipping their toes into the water, do a few verses with their hands and feet, as you have already done the arms and legs .

Then I suggest that you take the next step “stick your butt” because asses are fun. Any toddler with a tiny sense of humor will be on board. Then we do the belly, maybe the shoulders or the chest, and move on to “putting all of ourselves.” After that, since their face is still dry, tell them to “style their hair” and show that you are doing this by leaning back into the stream of water (rather than tilting their head forward, which is sometimes their instinct).

That’s it, you won.

It worked for my grumpy son in the YMCA locker room and for my adventurous daughter in the shower. She giggled and danced all the time, and as soon as her hair got wet, she asked for shampoo. By the end of the shower, she even washed her face (knowing that I had a dry towel ready). And then she insisted on taking a shower again in the morning because she was having so much fun.

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