suddenly scared of bath

I ran the bath and both boys ran into the bathroom and were all excited about the water. So I start undressing them and put Porter in first, and he started screaming. I panicked and double checked the temperature and to see if he was sitting on something that was poking him. All was fine, and I put Bridger in and he was perfectly happy. Porter never did calm down, he just kept screaming and trying to climb out of the tub. I kind of sponged him down but gave up and got him out. He clung to me for a good five minutes (luckily Bridger was happily playing in the water) before I could put him down on the bathroom floor and finish cleaning Bridger. It was like he was scared of the water, but he's never done that before. Any ideas?

I did discover later that Porter is running a fever, and he's been kind of cranky this afternoon. But at the time of the bath he was fine and didn't yet have a fever. Could the coming sickness have had anything to do with the bath issues? I just can't figure it out.

 

QUOTE(BridgePort @ Mar 22 2008, 10:52 PM) [snapback]682798[/snapback]
Could the coming sickness have had anything to do with the bath issues?


I think so. When mine are sick, EVERYTHING pisses them off. Sometimes even the things they love doesn't make them feel better and can set them off. He might have been feeling a bit under the weather and just tired and didn't feel like taking a bath, so he screamed. :huh: I know mine do when they are sick and/or too tired to deal with it. I hope it was a one time thing for Porter.

 

We went through about a week at that age that they cried through baths. We basically just washed them as quickly as possible and got them out. It subsided and they went back to loving bath time.

 

We are going through this right now. Nicholas has a very strong aversion to bathtime, so much so that when he hears the tub filling he starts wimpering and reaching for me to save him. For about a week, Jackson didn't like it, but this has lasted for a couple weeks with Nicholas, and he normally loves the bath. I was reading in What to Expect: The Toddlers Years that a phase of bath aversion is normal. Just hoping it passes soon!

 

We went through this phase at about 15 months (I think? maybe it was more like 18). It lasted a month or two. It was not fun, but once I figured out that nothing was really wrong and they were just hating the bath, I just did it really quick. (In a way, it's a nice thing to have baths go so fast!) We only bathe them twice a week, so a couple of months was not really that many baths anyway.

One thing that did help was to get some fun new bath toys. When they were really, really hating the bath, nothing helped, but once they were past that and just feeling sort of tentative about it, having some new toys made it seem fun again.