Photo by JD Hancock

Doing anything in the bathroom with a toddler runs the gamut from uncomfortably athletic to flat-out revolting; in my household I alternate between coaxing (“Take off your clothes,” “No, stay on the toilet,” “Please don’t slap me with the bath dinosaur”) and irritation/disgust that too often turns to rage (“No, poop stays in the toilet”; “Do not throw that at your brother!”).

But I’ve slowly learned a few things over the years about making kiddo bathroom time easier—mainly that brute force doesn’t work all that well, yelling just results in crying, and a little strategy goes a long way. Below, the best hacks I and other parents have come up with to make bathroom time a little less awful (and sometimes even pleasant).


Down Dog

This is the best tip I ever got for wiping a potty-training kid. Cleaning the tush of a toddler can be an ordeal—they’re wiggling, perhaps just delighted with themselves at their most recent accomplishment, you’re trying to get enough toilet paper in your hand to not besmirch yourself but also not clog the toilet—the whole dance is just setting the stage for a gross accident. So, instead of digging around in there while your kid is standing up straight, have your toddler assume the “downward-facing dog” position, which puts the relevant part of their anatomy pointing straight up at you. Side note: I’m looking forward to aging out of looking at people’s assholes.


Bath Drops

Coaxing a kid into the tub, at the end of the day, when you’re already tired and still facing a few more chores before bed, is a rather unsung ordeal in the annals of parenting. Now, this is when you might be tempted to go straight for brute force, but depending on how big/strong/wily your kid is, you may soon start to feel like you’re engaged in a land war in Asia. Three-dollar solution: bath drops, advises a parent of my acquaintance. For when bubbles are no longer enough of a novelty, give them a choice of red, yellow, or blue bath water. When the novelty on that wears off, back to bubbles. When that wears off, well, god willing, maybe they’ll be big enough to bathe themselves.


Teaching a boy to hit the toilet and not every square inch of bathroom around the toilet? Drop a few Cheerios in the bowl and tell him to take aim.


Ring the Doorbell

My younger child has always disliked having his teeth brushed, and often refuses to even open this mouth. There’s only so much you can do to force open a child’s mouth, so at some point we hit on “ringing the doorbell”—pressing on his nose and saying ding-dong. Sometimes he’ll shut his mouth six or seven times over the course of the tooth-brushing, and by the end my ding-dong is taking on a slightly hysterical tone, but you might be able to give each tooth a quick once-over before you totally crack up.


A Faucet Extender

Sometimes toddlers, even with a stool, can’t reach the faucet to wash their hands. A faucet extender brings the stream a smidge closer to their outstretched paws. Feeling like $10 is too much for something you’ll use for such a short time? “Cut a hole in the bottom of a take-and-toss sippy cup or plastic water bottle and put it over the faucet,” says Megan Zander, mom to two.

A Washcloth or Plastic Visor

Kids hate having their hair rinsed? I’ve always folded a dry washcloth in thirds, had my son press it to his eyebrows, and look up. This gets me about three cups’ worth of rinses before the washcloth saturates and water starts to run into his eyes—so it’s an an okay solution, but not a perfect one. Another friend recommends plastic bath visors for perhaps a perfect solution? Try it and tell me.


Catalog All the Food of the Day

My older kid would open his mouth for tooth-brushing but not keep it open; he’d get bored and his mouth would slowly drift shut after a few seconds. I would wiggle the toothbrush around and say irritably, nine or ten times, “Open your mouth!” Then I hit on pretending to be brushing out all the food he’d eaten that day: “Oh, I see some avocado in there, and, there’s a little chicken—oh, I’ve got to get that peanut butter out of the back teeth there...” Sometimes I “see” things that aren’t there (I mean in his teeth), like, “Oh I’ve got to get that dinosaur out of there—what’s a dinosaur doing in your teeth!” I mean, this is not my best comedy material but children are an easy audience, and when their mouths are open it’s easy to clean their molars.


Got more bathroom hacks for babies and kids? Let me know in the comments!