Stepmom tells stepdaughter; 'You NEED to shower more.' AITA? UPDATED

"AITA for telling my step daughter she needs to shower more?"

Fun fact to cover up spoilers: well, this post concerns showers, so I did look up how many showers a week is recommended for one to take. According to Harvard Health, there is no ideal frequency, but showering a few times per week is plenty for the average person.

If you are very active it is recommended you shower more. (I will note that how often you should wash your hair very much varies based on hair type, so that's a completely different answer.)

Me (47 F) and my husband (48 M) married a while ago. He already has Zak 19 M and Sam 16 F from his previous marriage. Together we have Jesse 12 M, Todd 10 M and Jake 8 M. Zak rents an apartment with his boyfriend. Sam lives with us and visits her mom and her mom’s BF every other weekend.

I adore Sam, I really do, it’s so exhilarating to have a daughter to bond with, to put it selfishly. I really do love the woman she’s becoming, because she’s sweet and generous and quick witted.

We have lots of fun going out together just the two of us. Like I said beyond the fun times I think she’s a smart young lady with a generally good head on her shoulders and I’m proud of her for her strength of character. I think we have a strong bond.

The only trouble is recently Sam has started to really kick up quite a funk. She’s entering that age where teenagers need a couple showers a day to kick off the sweat, but I’m lucky if she showers once a day.

She will either brush her teeth in the morning or night but beyond that, it’s stank breath. If she isn’t leaving the house, she usually stays in her sweaty PJs all day and bums around with oily bed head, so most weekends she’s with us, she sometimes showers on Friday and then again on Monday. I don’t know what goes on at her mother’s place in that department.

I tried delicately telling Sam she needs to freshen up more often during the day but she usually just agrees to it, does a couple days of following a proper hygiene schedule, then falls back to her nasty habits.

Yesterday she tried to sit next to me at dinner. She smelled positively rank. She had gone running and hadn’t bothered to shower when she got home. I told her that I needed to move away from her at the table because of her BO.

Sam teared up, which I hated to see, and didn’t eat at all. She also didn’t leave her bedroom until today around noon. While my husband called me insensitive, he also can’t give me a better idea to handle Sam’s hygiene issue.

Sam is an incredibly active girl. She runs, bikes, swims, and plays soccer. Previous more gentle approaches have been either brushed off, ignored, or have a 7-10 day follow through period.

We’ve tried implementing some higher quality products such as soap, deodorant, conditioner and shampoo, toothpaste and specialized toothbrushes, and given her access to “quick fix” options like perfume, dry shampoo, and breath mints and gum. The only one of those she uses is the breath mints. She showers maybe 3-6 times a week.

We’ve tried firmer approaches where we wouldn’t go to an event until she showered but she would simply call our bluff and go another day without showering. She used to shower daily as a younger teen and even after puberty. It’s only recently she’s pushed back. Mom is not an ally in this topic.

I’m deeply concerned by the potential core issues surrounding this shift. It seems like she’s going for longer stretches and even going to school without having showered for a couple days.

I don’t want her to have this follow her throughout school and be known as the smelly kid and I want to understand why, when she’s visibly uncomfortable because of her lack of showering, she doesn’t clean up.

The update is that when Sam wakes up, I’ll sit her down and be open about the fact I reacted poorly in the moment. I’ll tell her that I’m sorry for embarrassing her and hurting her feelings at all but especially that way.

I’ll leave the door open to have her talk to me, her father, or ask if she’d like to talk to a counselor at school or a therapist about anything that might be weighing on her.

Something is clearly wrong with my daughter and I let my concern turn to frustration with myself over not being able to help fix the problem, which I intentionally or not unleashed on her at the worst possible moment.

Thank you to everyone who weighed in and gave advice. The most salient was to try to talk again. Sometimes as with any relationship, trying to talk things through can feel like you’re going in circles until there’s either an internal or external realization or push that shifts the talk just enough to be able to have a productive heart to heart.

I’m not talking about a quick lap around the block or a dip in the lake. She goes for runs that last three hours, when the season hits she’s playing soccer and training daily as soon as the weather suits her tolerance leavers, and when she swims it’s in a chlorine pool for hours.

Her dad is trying with me. He helped her pick out and trial several different soaps and toothpastes and tooth brush styles because he was worried she had a sensitivity issue toward the products.

I know that he has tried to have her open up when they go on father-daughter excursions and also give her the space to be able to speak with him about just about anything. They have a strong connection. It’s like this one topic is just a Gordian knot that just won’t budge.

My husband has mentioned that Sam smells. Her maternal aunt has as well. It’s not just me. I understand that it can be unhealthy to shower multiple times a day daily but showering in the morning and then showering after being very active and sweaty surely isn’t the same?

If I’m wrong, please tell me, but either way I’m going to look into the specifics of it to make sure.

Before we give you OP's update, let's take a look at some top comments:

squirlgirl writes:

Honestly, Sam sounds like she's got some depression issues. I went through something similar as a teenager and looking back, it was kind of obvious to see that I had some pretty major depression issues. Part of it was hormonal, but part of it was also stuff that was going on around me.

Even if this isn't the case, I'm glad that OP is going to be offering therapy for Sam. However they may want to try and go as a family or be prepared for what they should do if Sam says no. OP may want to go and see a therapist themselves - they can talk with them about how they can help their daughter and so on. Plus it's just nice to have an uninvolved and (theoretically) neutral party to talk to about things.

round3 writes:

NTA. As a mom or friend you need to be honest with her. If you can smell her, her classmates that sit next to her for hours are probably smelling her too (which is not fair). She is going to get the reputation of being the smelly dirty girl.

If the mother and the father are not really helping her with her lack of hygiene habits, well, someone has to step up and unfortunately there is no easy way to say it other than you need to shower.

You are not being rude or mean about it. You are not trying to offend her. It is uncomfortable for you to tell her those things. Do you think she is kind of depressed or she is going through something?

Has she always been kind of like that and you didn’t really notice it as much as of now because of the smell?. Maybe talk to her about it in private, tell her how much you love her and that you see her as daughter that you would like to have one day. She might open up about what is going on.

pverthank writes:

YTA for how you handled it but I don’t think you’re wrong to be concerned about her hygiene and smell. Kids get bullied for a lot less than this. It could be an underlying issue so perhaps you could take her to see someone?

I think you should also sit her down and firstly; apologize for what you said at the table and then have a proper conversation with her about her hygiene. It’s an awkward convo to have but sometimes necessary. I hope someone would come to me if they thought I stank.

queenlatif writes:

NAH. I have adhd + depression and have gone long periods of time without showering many times. After my best friend died, I barely showered at all (roughly once or twice a week) for roughly 6 months. It’s gross, I know. I smell gross, I look gross, I feel inherently gross.

It’s very visible when my mental health is at a low point and I’ve had to find ways to combat the issue outside of showers. I now keep body wipes, dry shampoo, detangler, deodorant, and floss sticks in both my bedside table and my purse. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s about a hundred times better than nothing. I also found that I prefer to take baths on non-hair wash days.

I often make it a whole experience just by adding some bubble bath & lighting a couple candles - literally does wonders for my mental health. I find it to be the most effective, relatively low effort solution for me.It took me years to come up with a decent solution for myself & wasn’t until I was called out similarly to the comment you made to realize how much it affected me & those around me.

I can’t say what is causing your daughter to delay showers or if any of these temporary fixes would help but I thought I’d share.You may have embarrassed her, but she stank and it negatively impacted you. I just can’t call you an AH even if you could’ve technically handled it better.

vipppp writes:

Soft YTA. I get that you want to help, but your approach was unkind and expecting anyone to shower multiple times a day is excessive. Soaping up too often can cause major skin issues along with dry and damaged hair. It sounds like she needs some more effective deodorant rather than multiple showers a day.

Be mindful that YOUR solution doesn't have to be HER solution. Give her some time, and peer pressure will likely take care of some of the issues for you. She is much more likely to listen to an "ewww! you stink" from a friend than from a parent. As for the bad breath, set her up with some antiseptic mouthwash and floss along with a good electric toothbrush.

Since brushing MORE hasn't been effective, try improving the QUALITY of the brushing she does do. Give her the tools and let her sort herself out.

vatewer writes:

NTA. It was not as if you yelled at her. You have to try another stategy to get her to improve her hygiene. Maybe trying to get her to see someone elses POV if they go out to a meal and the person they are sitting next to needs a shower. What do they think of that person.

Not pointing a finger at her. Or take her out to the drug store and have her try some body washes to get a couple that make her small nice. Same for a shampoo.

Also look for signs of depression such as sleeping too much, change in appetite, trouble sleeping, change in weight, thoughts about hurting herself. It also may be time to take her to a pediatrician for a physical exam and you can mention this to the pediatrician who can give her medical reasons why she should shower more. Good luck.

Update:

In the morning before Sam went to school, we talked about the dinner incident. I apologized for embarrassing her and told her I reacted badly. I told her I was so sorry I hurt her and made her feel she was too gross to be close to.

She explained it hurt all the more because she’d wanted to be near me and the actual refusal to sit close hurt more than being told she smelled. We talked before the car ride in and then along the way, just to clear the air and make sure she was emotionally okay to handle her studies or if she needed time to calm down.

She apologized as well because she knows she should shower more but often doesn’t want to, which was an excellent segue. We didn’t get fully into it on the ride in especially because she said she wanted to think about how she was going to explain what she was going through.

She also asked me if the conversation, when we had it, could stay between us until she thought it over more. I was equal parts honored and nervous.

God I was so nervous all day, I can’t lie. I had a lot of theories in mind. I sat down and forced myself to look at all possible options, even the scariest ones, and researched any other warning signs or symptoms I might have missed. I spent a lot of time reading about neurodivergency, stories from SA survivors and about physical issues that could be causing the hesitancy.

I’ll admit that before I didn’t look deeply at a mental health aspect as I should have because she seemed, other than her hygiene, doing well. Grades were fine, friendships still solid, and I didn’t get any red flags from her describing her times at her mother’s place or with her mother’s BF.

Before, whenever we asked her why she didn’t shower, she said she forgot, didn’t feel like it, or that she’d get to it later.

I failed her a lot in small ways that compounded to a major extent, which stings to realize.

When she got out of school, we started talking tangentially on the ride home about the topic she’d mentioned wanting to address. She reiterated that this discussion was between us until she was ready to talk to her dad.

My heart was in my throat when she said that there was a reason she wasn’t showering but that she didn’t know how to say it and she was afraid she’d gone so long without saying anything that now she couldn’t.

So when we got home, we made up some tea and went into my room for privacy while we chatted.

It’s so easy as a parent to think you can read your children perfectly or at least well enough not to get blindsided but teens are very good at masking things especially if they feel like they’re failing when they’re struggling. I wish I’d dug deeper before now, which I did apologize to Sam for.

I didn’t notice she was struggling with more than just a time management or cleanliness issue and I focused on the wrong part of the issue, thinking the symptom was its own root. It made this a much more uncertain and difficult time for her.

Sam expressed to me that she felt uncomfortable identifying as a girl. She isn’t sure to what extent that disconnect goes, but it definitely made it harder for her to even want to shower.

Her long hair was another matter, as washing it felt incongruous and gross, like it was emblematic of a person she wasn’t and overall made the entire experience more distressing.

She said she already felt disgusting no matter if she showered or brushed her teeth or not, which again made it harder for her to get herself to clean up. It felt like a huge emotional drain for her to shower, without any real benefit.

Sam has been feeling this way for a while now apparently and felt a lot of mixed emotions just about that fact for number of reasons. Many activities we bond over or spend time together doing are stereotypically feminine.

She’d started to feel like a bad child because of the conflict between what she was uncomfortable with and the fact she still wanted to spend time together. Like painting her nails would make her feel uncomfortable, but she still wanted to go with me to the nail salon for example.

There’s been so many times Sam wanted to tell us, to talk it through to help her detangle her emotions by having a sounding board. It hurts so badly to know someone you love has wanted to reach out but didn’t know how to, and you failed them.

Sam doesn’t want to tell her mother about her gender and what she’s feeling about it, so her father and I will be a united front in case her mother decides to make any comments about the upcoming haircut. It’s ironic that the fake name I used in my post is androgynous, but her given name is very feminine.

Sam will go by just the first initial instead to see how it feels but is also looking into all three of us finding a new name that fits. So “Sam” will go by “S”, and is still considering if she wants to try male pronouns or something else, and is testing the waters with self references with masculine connotations and has asked to be called our child instead of daughter.

In hindsight, things clicked. The perfume, the small rotation of clothing, her friend group, certain phases while growing up. I can’t exactly explain well but I will say it does make sense now.

Onto the matter of hygiene: We’ve come up with a shower schedule and put it on the door to the bathroom she uses most and stored a few sets of comfortable clothing there, so at any point, Sam could just immediately jump in the shower without worrying about other steps, which was another hurdle in the process.

We’re definitely going to get Sam tested for ADHD asap, because some of the hang ups in the process of showering were very similar to what I’d read. We brainstormed ideas of what would actually make it easier to follow through.

A wash cloth and showering in the dark, the haircut, cologne and masculine or neutrally scented bathing products, having the clothes already in there, and a detailed schedule based off her usual work out routine with the understanding of exactly what consequences will be.

Partially Sam’s reason for asking me to make sure this stayed between us at first was that Sam had wanted to impress her father by coming to him with a plan already in place to show she had put in considerable thought on how she could actionably change her habits after having failed to follow through with promises to change before.

I said that was a very mature way of looking to resolve a discussion and assuaging concerns about accountability. Additionally Sam wanted to practice how to explain what she was feeling before trying to tell him.

Sam and I will be going shopping tonight or tomorrow before this weekend to her mother’s. That’s when we’ll do her hair, pick out cologne, and some other products. I’ll also be looking into a chest compression vest, because Sam has been flattening her chest with extra sports bras which doesn’t seem safe to me.

Family counseling is on the books to help with communications between us all, as is finding a therapist for Sam that specializes in LGBTQ matters.

I’m hopeful. I made serious mistakes in how I handled this, more than I realized when I first posted, but I hope that now we can all make sure Sam is happy and healthy.