Chronicle of a mother: are the children all dirty (and smelly)?

This post is taken from the weekly newsletter “Le Balagan” by our editor-in-chief Candice Satara. Candice is the mother of four boys ages 2 to 12. To receive it you can sign up for free here.

This week I discovered a study that made me smile. Scientists have studied how body odor changes during adolescence. The conclusions are surprising, the detected odors can be similar to those smells of goat, cheese or even sweat and urine. Hmm, bon appetit. So I don’t go crazy when I find it It has a very strong odor in the morning when I enter my pre-teen’s room. If the odors they give off are beyond their control (thanks to hormonal upheavals), on the other hand their approach to cleaning leaves me perplexed. I’m telling you.

The other evening, while I was tidying up the bathroom, I realized that my children (the two oldest, aged 12 and 10) had washed without soap. The bottle had been empty since morning, I completely forgot to buy more after finishing it. They stay under water for two hours telling each other about their lives, but they don’t feel the need to soap themselves up. If I don’t tell them to wash their hair, they never do it, sometimes they just rinse them, so I can leave them alone. And I’m not talking about brushing your teeth, you have to repeat, insist, check that the toothbrush is wet, every day of the year, 3 or 4 times a day. Do the math.

Let’s not talk about clothes

On to clothes, this week I caught my youngest going back to the dirty laundry to secretly retrieve his jogging bottoms because “That’s just what I like “. The other, very maniacal with his beautiful sneakers, cleans the dirty sole with saliva and with his fingers, on the street, like this! When they returned from the field, the suitcase was almost clean, the boys had worn all the the same clothes for days. And the food? My eldest son finishes the sauce on his plate with his finger. Until what age do children eat dirt? Real question.

Dirt Oscar

However, I will share with you an episode that alone deserves a lousy Oscar. My son Adrien finishes the Etorki, this delicious sheep’s cheese whose packaging is increasingly thinner, but which costs more and more. He might say to himself: “Shit, I’m out of cheese.” Well, I don’t know what’s going through his mind, but the guy decides to throw the remaining scabs in the boxer bin. A few days or weeks later, as I was putting things away, a a pestilential odor is released of the toilet. Then I come across the rotten scabs of Etorki fire. What’s rather funny is that the child also doesn’t share his water bottle with me, and looks at me indignantly when I lick the spoonful of Nutella. The same one who combs his hair for 15 minutes in the morning, but he ignores his teeth. I love my children infinitely, but I often find them dirty. Twins are no exception, they explore the world feeding on multiple sensory stimulations. I accept with resignation that they spit their biscuit into my hand, play with the toilet water or chew my Boul Quies. And in the morning their breathing also lifts my heart a little.

Before I had kids I remember wanting girls, normally we want what we know. The truth is, the smelly feet, the sweat, the body hair, the acne, and, God, the masturbation side… yuck. I remembered Nicolas too much, 5°3, his huge feet and his nice moustache who made him so ugly, he who was so cute in elementary school. You will tell me that girls are dirty, messy and even smell like wild animals. Yes, but they look cleaner, right?

So yes, I’m obsessive

Yes, I wash my toilets often (at the same time we only have 1 out of 6), yes, I can’t stand when the twins have snot on their nose, yes, I use too much paper towels and I know it’s not eco-friendly. And yes, the first sentence I say to my children when they come home from school is “Wash your hands, and with soap”.

I am obsessed with cleanliness, but strangely not from microbes, nor from the contagion of diseases. Knowing that the child who spent the day outside, comes home, and then puts his dirty hands everywhere, starting with his little brothers’ cheeks, can drive me crazy. Last time, my 12 year old son invited 3 friends to sleep over for his birthday. McDonald’s, TV, Switch – everything, they had a lot of fun. And I could observe that they had a perfect intestinal transit many times they went to the bathroom, and never, no never, washed their hands when they came out. In the morning, around 11, I entered the room to wake them up and the smell of farts, feet, mixed with sweat was unbearable. Welcome to adolescence.

What are my hidden urges around cleanliness?

I wanted to share these few thoughts with you feel a little less alone, and why I wonder if other people’s children are the same. I sometimes wonder if their questionable hygiene is part of a power struggle wider between me and them. The more I insist, the more they resist, a bit like with vegetables or with tidying up the room. OR, it would just be laziness, taking a shower is a chore, cleaning the traces in the toilet, what a waste of time! Children are the champions of procrastination, they put off tasks that they consider boring. Shower after homework, hair tomorrow and teeth after the movie… When I reread it, I tell myself (like every time) that I have to let them go a little, that it would do me good to be a little more flexible about everything. It’s so hard to change your behavior. What are my hidden urges around cleanliness? Do you need control again and again? Fatigue. And she ?

Listen to Apéro des Daronnes, Madmoizelle’s show that aims to break down taboos on parenting.