Hellobee Boards

I'm sure you've tried some of these already, but these are all the things I've tried:

Making water seem fun - playing with water in a sink or bucket, water squirting, spray bottles, bubbles, color tablets to change the water color, new bathtub toys (note that anything solid plastic from the dollar store is perfect for the tub), foam animals that stick to the sides and tile, cups for pouring back and forth, leave a trickle of water running to play with, actually getting in with him to play.

My son still hates to have his hair washed, so I use a washcloth instead of pouring water and it kind of delays the meltdown until I'm mostly done.

We experimented with different water depths, holding him with us in the shower (total failure for us) and came to realize that he just was going through a phase. We powered through it by cutting down our baths to sometimes once a week and always trying to introduce something fun and new that kept him distracted long enough to get his hair wet.

@JLC53: my daughter started doing this right around 2 also- just screaming for the whole bath, calming down when we took her out and wrapped her up, then the screaming starts again when I put lotion on her (not optional, she has dry skin and eczema).

We got around it by having her shower with me- I hold her while she gets clean then she will stand in the shower while I wash myself or her sister- yes, 3 of us in a stand up shower. Super relaxing for me. She still whines while I wash her hair but I’ll take that over screaming and sobbing.

We recently got a removable shower head for the kids bathroom and do showers for them in there now (without me having to get in). She doesn’t like it as much but if her sister gets cleaned first and they get to take turns holding the shower head it isn’t a total sob fest.

We hit this phase. It didn't resolve until I crawled in the tub with her one time, and then after that, it was much better. And like others said, new/different toys are a great distraction!

Yep that happened briefly at some point too with DD2, probably around 2 also. Letting her blow bubbles in the bath was what it took!

@turquoisemama: great idea! So fun.

This happened with DS too. He was gifted a small watering can and now loves baths as long as there are bubbles and toys to rinse the bubbles off with the watering can. We use small dinosaurs in the tub

Agree with @sweetiepie: that its a phase. My oldest is a FISH but he's gone through at least 2 phases I can remember where he SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER about the bath or getting his hair wet or something else for a few weeks.

We got through by letting him go through a bath crayon phase and scribble all over the bathtub area, using those color drops, using Bubble Bath, and we started giving him his gummy vitamins in the bath. It was an incentive to get in there. Sometimes we'd also save dessert for bathtime and he could sit and eat a cookie or a have an ice cream cone in the bath (saved the mess too!).