Mom asks if she was wrong to not remind teenage son to shower.
It's hard to be a mom to a teenage boy, especially when he doesn't shower. When this mom is upset with her son for not showering but does nothing about it, she takes to the popular Reddit forum to ask:
'AITA for not reminding my son to shower, causing him to be humiliated?'
showerproblems25 writes:
I (F 40’s) have a son “Mike” (M15). He is a good kid except he has a bit of a video game issue. He will lose track of time very quickly and forget to do other things unless he is reminded multiple times (and even then he gets mad that he is being reminded).
Example: he will forget the time I told him to come down and eat, and get mad if I call him more than once but then comes down half an hour later and is mad that his food is cold.
A while ago he was doing bad in school because he couldn’t stop playing soon enough to be able to complete his homework by the end of the day so we took away his console until he got his grades up. They’ve been fine ever since.
One thing I had been dealing with for over a year now is the fact that he will forget to shower. We had an issue where he wouldn’t stop playing to shower (or at least take a break to do so) and he would be making noise at 10-11PM when he finally realized he hadn’t yet.
This was an issue for me as I have to wake up at 2 AM to get ready for work and I would always be woken up since my room shares a wall with the bathroom.
I then told him that he had until 9 PM to shower: no later than that. This wouldn’t work either and while he did shower before 9 three or four times, he quickly went back to the same pattern. Keep in mind that I would remind him to shower MULTIPLE times throughout the day, starting as soon as he got home from school. Didn’t work.
So, about a few days ago I decided I was done. I wasn’t going to remind him 10 times throughout the day and left him. He did not shower for 4-5 days in a row. He plays sports. He stunk. He still didn’t shower.
Yesterday was the 4th or 5th day without showering and he came home from school very angry. He wouldn’t speak to me in the car and was wearing a hoodie even though it’s 100+ degrees here. He got home and immediately showered.
Later in the day he blew up, yelling “why didn’t anyone tell me I smelled bad!?” He was very mad because apparently his friends had been acting weird and a girl he has a crush told ended up being the one to tell him he smelled bad and offered him deodorant.
He was extremely embarrassed and hasn’t spoken to any of us after his angry speech he gave after school yesterday.
I feel bad that he had to be embarrassed but I didn’t know what else to do. AITA? Should i have handled it a different way?
Well, let's see what Reddit had to say on this one.
crystalzzz2000 writes:
NTA. But, OP, I think you need to step in more as a parent here. There should be a timer that goes off at 8:30 and then video game time is over. Without being plugged in, he should have time to do other things... like shower.
If even without video games he doesn't remember to shower, you need to get this kid into a therapist who can help figure out what's going on and create a plan to help him remember basic things.
aphraea brings up this interesting point:
I’m not sure OP’s TA specifically for the showering thing, but the description of the son’s behaviour is screaming “unsupported neurodivergence” to me.
chocolatesnowflake writes:
ESH. He’s 15, he’s responsible for his own hygiene. But you’re an asshole for not trying to curb your sons gaming addiction.