Personal hygiene for school aged children
Teaching your child to keep his body clean is an important part of building his self-esteem – if he cares about the way he presents himself and feels good about his body then he’ll feel pretty good about himself.
Children can be pretty brutal with each other, so there are about a million ways your child can feel self-conscious during his school years. But if you teach him good personal hygiene habits early, then at least he won’t have to worry about the obvious ones: hair-care, body odour and bad breath.
Clothes and hygiene
- Clothes, and especially underwear, should be changed every day. Even if they’re not smelly, your child’s clothes have collected sweat, stains and dead skin cells (and who knows what else!) while they’ve been worn. Overnight, bacteria will start to work on these stains so the clothes will never smell as nice on the second day of wearing.
- Encourage your child to take off his school uniform as soon as he gets home and to hang it up to air before he has to wear it the next day.
- Teach your child to change his underwear every day – it sounds obvious, but this is something that sometime stops happening regularly once your child begins to take charge of himself.
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