This is a sponsored post for The Motherhood and their client Johnson’s.
When our babies were newborns my husband and I bathed them together, but as soon as they were able to safely sit up my husband took over bath duty. It provided me with a much needed break and allowed me to get things done around the house without children under foot.
It turns out my children also benefited because my husband made bath time fun and in doing so helped my kids early development. Well, I’m not sure that brushing their wet hair into faux-hawks while singing Billy Idol songs helped their development, but according to Johnson’s Global Baby Bath Report he did do quite a few things that were beneficial.
4 Benefits of Bath Time Fun for Children
1. Develop Hand Eye Coordination
Playing with bubbles helps babies develop hand-eye coordination. My seven year old still loves taking a bubble bath. My husband took bubbles a step further. Once my kids approached the age of one, my husband would use a bubble wand to blow bubbles for the kids while they were in the bath tub. They would try to catch the bubbles on their fingers and had lots of fun popping them.
2. Learn Cause and Effect
Splashing and pouring water from a cup are fun ways to introduce the concept of cause and effect. Playing peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek with a duck by hiding it under the bubbles is a fun way to teach object permanence – the rubber duck still exists, even when it can’t be seen.
3. Build Language Skills
From singing Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes while bathing to talking about wet and dry, or empty and full, bath time is a wonderful time to increase your child’s vocabulary. My husband also used tub letters to reinforce ABCs and phonics. He even had me buy extra sets of letters so he could start teaching our kids to spell.
4. Increased Engagement.
JOHNSON’S® recently released the results of their Global Baby Bath Report and research shows that infants who experienced routine touch and massage were 50% more likely to make eye contact and 3 times more likely to have an overall positive expression.
Studies have shown that babies bathed with a fragranced bath product (compared to those who were not) displayed 30% more engagement cues with their parent after bath and spent nearly 25% less time crying before sleep.
The bubbles also stimulate baby senses through touch and smell, which are both closely tied to memory development, and provide a great time for parent and baby to bond. Check out The Power of Bath Time infographic below to see more ways that bath time helps with your child’s development.
What are your child’s favorite bath time games?
Would you like to save this article?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Leave a Reply