Why Is Basic Hygiene Such a Battle With My Tween?

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Reena Ninan:
Is this normal for a 12-year-old to resist basic routines like changing her underwear daily and washing her hair?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A lot is going on here. Kids don’t always smell so good and they are still figuring it out. If this kid smells, they can’t always smell it.

Reena Ninan:
I do not like to be lied to.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
The lying is collateral. It’s not actually the problem.

Reena Ninan:
I am at the phase now of parenting, which I love about our podcast. You had warned me about this a couple years ago, and it was kind of cool to know that this was going to happen, where my kids are all about hygiene, and their hair, and nice scented soaps and everything. But I was kind of surprised when we got this letter about some parents talking about their kids and hygiene. Is this something you hear about often?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. So I mean, kids can be all over the hygiene spectrum here with some parents wishing their kids would walk it back from how much time they’re spending on their facial routine. And then there are other families, and this is actually not that unusual, where the kid’s body is changing, it’s moving into puberty, and they are not getting with the program of needing to up their game, keep their body clean in new ways. I hear about it a fair bit. And I think if you asked a middle school teacher, they would definitely report that one of the realities of being a middle school teacher is that kids don’t always smell so good, and they are still figuring it out. And so it’s a wide range, but it is not that unusual for kids to struggle with taking care of this.

Reena Ninan:
I want to read this letter to you.
Dear Dr. Lisa Damour, I’m writing because I’m struggling with my 12-year-old daughter around hygiene and more troubling about lying. She resists basic routines like changing her underwear daily and washing her hair. When I ask her directly, she often says that she’s done these things when she hasn’t. For example, I noticed that over the course of a week, only one pair of underwear showed up in the laundry. When I told her I’d start paying closer attention, she began putting clean underwear into the laundry instead of actually changing. She would also come out of the bathroom with her hair wet, wrapped in a towel, pretending that she washed it and she didn’t. She’s a good kid overall, social, doing well in school with friends, and that’s part of what makes this so confusing. I’ve tried explaining that hygiene matters for her health and comfort, and that honesty matters in our family.
I’m worried that both the hygiene issues and the lying could carry into her teen years and cause bigger problems. For now, I’ve taken away her iPad because she lied, but I’m not sure that’s the right approach, especially since it’s her main way of staying connected with her friends. This has been going on for about a year and I’m feeling stuck. I’d really appreciate your guidance, sincerely a concerned parent.
So Lisa, what is going on here?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A lot. A lot is going on here. Listening to the letter and thinking it through as you read it, I was like, okay, I don’t know why this kid is not changing her underwear. I don’t know what that’s about. The hair washing thing I hear, where kids won’t wash it, don’t wash it, say they washed it, pretend they washed it. But what’s happening here is that this kid’s not taking good care of herself. She’s not taking over the ownership of taking good care of herself. One thought I have just sort of to frame this up, and then we can get into the weeds of like, what should this family do now that they’re in this position? There’s a really interesting thing I’ve noticed over the years around teens and bodily autonomy. Where it’s come up especially is for kids who have medical needs where they need to be meeting with doctors and doctors have to be touching them or doing things that feel intrusive, like setting aside the yuckiness of having to deal with that, young kids don’t mind that so much.
They’re used to the idea of adults picking them up and helping them wash and things like that. They’re used to that idea of being touched in that way, for lack of a better word. Adults can tolerate if they have to have a medical procedure. They may not like it, but they can deal with it. Teenagers, and this actually can create a real challenge sometimes for things like diabetes care. Don’t like people mess them with their bodies. They’re very, very autonomous in that way. And it’s very much, you can hear in my voice. It rubs them the wrong way when someone wants to get anywhere near their body. There’s just a lot of kind of ownership and gatekeeping around that. And so part of how this is derailing with this kid, if I think about it developmentally is, okay, so she’s not taking great care of her body and we need to figure out how to get that back on track.
But then when the parent is like, “I’m going to try to make you do it, right? I’m going to try to keep track of your underwear.” Then the kid’s like, “Ha ha, I am going to keep ownership and control even at the cost of my own hygiene because I don’t like anybody telling me how to run my body.” So that’s what’s running through this is that we’ve got a 12-year-old and she’s reasoning like a 12-year-old and we have to contend with that.

Reena Ninan:
One of my first questions was, this seems like a hygiene problem, but what’s the psychological underpinning here that’s going through the child?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. Okay. So I think we got the piece about why is the kid actually doubling down? That’s the thing that’s really interesting. The mom’s like, “You need to change your underwear kids.” Kids like, “Watch this.” I think the doubling down, right? I think that’s just the like, “You can’t control my body. I’m a teenager.”
I really mean it when I said, I don’t know why this kid’s not changing her underwear. But I will say on the hair wash, it does happen, and I don’t know if you remember when this happened with your kids. I kind of vaguely remember when it happened with my kids where they go through a greasy phase. Their hair did not require regular washing in the same way when they were little kids and then they hit early adolescence and then you’re like, “Dude, what is going on with your hair?”

Reena Ninan:
Yes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s a new routine. That’s what we need to understand. It’s a new routine and new routines are hard and kids don’t always know how to adopt them.

Reena Ninan:
You mentioned there was a point and you kind of forget it once you move past some of these stages, but I do remember this where hygiene wasn’t of importance, but they hadn’t really hit those teen years yet. Is this normal for a 12-year-old to be going through this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m not going to say it’s not normal. I think there’s so many threads here psychologically. So one is like, don’t mess with my body. Another is you’re asking me to adopt a routine that I’ve never had to do before where I now have to wash my hair two or three times a week at least. I mean, especially it feels like when they’re coming into puberty, it can get greasy fast. And then the third piece, which I actually think is really, really important, and maybe at work here on the hair thing, I still don’t understand the underwear thing. Kids are pretty ambivalent about going into puberty. I don’t know. Do you remember going into puberty and how you felt about it?

Reena Ninan:
I wasn’t thrilled.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I was like, it feels out of control, right? Yeah. Because it kind of is out of control.

Reena Ninan:
Totally right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I will say, Reena. I also, it’s funny, this is just an aside. I also had daydreams about what puberty could make happen for me. And I had this basically, because I was 12, right? I was like, “I could end up looking like a Barbie. This could be amazing. I could be five ten with giant boobs or whatever.”
Somehow my 12 year old self was like, “Maybe that’s the outcome that’s going to happen.” Which of course, no, it did not. But you’re on this precipice and you’re like, “My body’s just about to do its own thing. It’s super weird. I’m along for the ride.” And I have definitely cared for this. And I wrote about this and Untangled. There are kids who are like, “I’m going to ignore this because I don’t want to deal with it.” So I think that that explains the hair stuff and sometimes, and this is also like hygiene, yucky, but understandably psychologically, I’ve seen girls do this with getting their period where they are so they don’t want to deal and so they don’t deal and it’s messy.

Reena Ninan:
I guess that was one of my big questions is like, what’s happening here? Is this laziness, what’s going on in the tween brain that we don’t know that we should know?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I mean, it’s all of the above, right? New routine, don’t want to deal with puberty. I don’t want anybody talking to me about my body. And now that you’re talking to me about it, I’m definitely not going to do the thing you’re asking. That’s what’s easy pickings here in terms of what’s going on. I’ve sometimes cared for teenage boys where, and this happens with kids of all genders where they get bad acne and things have changed so much since we were teenagers. There’s such good treatments and it’s not always inexpensive. It’s not always convenient to acquire. But at this point, most acne is quite treatable. And I’ve watched families go to all of the trouble and cost of securing the medicine the kid needs and then he’s not using it. And when I’ve asked or tried to understand, they’re like, “He just wants to do other stuff.” It’s just, he’s watching a show he wants to watch. He’s playing a video game he wants to watch. It’s just not important to him. And it takes time and effort to take care of these things. So there’s even something I think as simple as not a priority for the kid, right? It’s maybe the parent’s priority, but it’s not the kid’s priority. And so all of those things can be at work when kids aren’t taking care of their bodies.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, what I didn’t understand in this letter is why is this kid being so sneaky, right? The towel on the head when she didn’t wash her hair, the clean underwear in the dirty laundry bag when she didn’t change hers, like what’s going on there?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I mean, I think the simplest explanation is, “I want total control here and you are invading my privacy,” which the parent truly is not. The parent is like, “Dude, you got to change your underwear. You got to wash your hair.” But I definitely can see kids feeling like, “This is private, this is my body. I’m not going to let you intrude upon it.” And one thing that is true, and I’ve seen this in other situations where kids have legitimately had their privacy intruded upon, and I’ll give an example, kids get sneaky to maintain their privacy.
In Untangled, I wrote about a girl I cared for who kept a diary and she had it in a lockbox in her closet and her dad was insistent on seeing it, so she kept trying to find new ways to hide it. There was nothing to it. There was nothing that needed to be seen by an adult. Kids want privacy for the sake of their own privacy in adolescence, and I’m a big fan of kids having privacy, right? If they want to go in their room and close the door, especially if the techs not in there, I think they should be allowed to do that. And I have seen through my life as a clinician, when parents don’t allow kids basic privacy, kids get sneaky to get it. So I think probably what’s happening with this kid psychologically about the lying is she’s like, “This feels private. You’re intruding on my privacy. I’m going to use sneakiness to maintain my privacy.” And the way it’s read by the adult, understandably, is now the kid’s lying to me and now I have a lying problem on top of a hygiene problem.

Reena Ninan:
The other thing I couldn’t understand, Lisa, is at some point, don’t the kids pick up on the scent and the lack of hygiene and they’re so all about picking on each other. Hasn’t that happened and isn’t that a concern for the child?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, this is the worry. I mean.
Social stuff can be so fragile. And 12 year olds tend to be seventh graders and seventh graders are not always the nicest, right? And so one concern is you don’t want a kid getting teased for smelling bad. That’s a concern that is very real. And what I will say about smell, actually, this is sort of an interesting, weird little psychological factoid. Smell is the sense that habituates the fastest that we get used to it and can no longer detect it anymore. So when we put on a perfume, you have to commit to how much you put on the first time because you will stop smelling it. And sometimes people put on more and more and more because they themselves can no longer smell it, but everybody else can. So if this kid smells, they can’t always smell it because they’ve habituated, smell habituats. So they don’t notice their own BO.

Reena Ninan:
They’re used to it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And what we really don’t want is their peers to be like, “What the what?”
I will say, I think generally kids don’t do this because a lot of kids in middle school smell, honestly, but that’s something that you do want to try to prevent.

Reena Ninan:
So if you were working with this family, where would you start? What would your advice be to them?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think I would start by saying to the parent, “The lying is collateral. It’s not actually the problem.” And this is something that we’ve seen before, and I think it’s super important. It is offensive when our kids lie to us. I have found there’s different kinds of lying. There’s lying to try to get away with something really super naughty, which is actually not what this kid is doing. There’s lying because the kid is actively trying to avoid dealing with something, and so they lie to maintain the avoidance. Often you’ll see this in the form of kids who have gotten themselves into some sort of terrible homework hole and the parent’s like, “Did you do the homework?” The kid’s like, “Yeah, totally.” Because the kid is like, “I don’t even know where to start.” And then of course it all hits the fan eventually. And then the parents are like, “Oh my gosh, you were lying to me.” I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the problem actually is that the kid’s in the homework hole and the lying, getting derailed by the lying isn’t going to make this better.
I would probably say a whole lot of stuff like that to this family of, “Don’t get derailed by the lying because yeah, she shouldn’t lie to you. But the issue is this kid is refusing to take care of basic hygiene, has gotten herself into a spot where for some reason she’s stuck and we need to get her unstuck. Let’s not worry about the lying for now. Let’s figure out why she is not taking care of herself. Let’s try to get her to start taking better care of herself so that she doesn’t have to lie about this to you.”

Reena Ninan:
So what you’re saying in this situation, the priority is sort of fixing this hygiene problem and then we’ll deal with the lying later.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. And hopefully lying will go away because the kid will be managing it and won’t have to lie about it. But so then it gets this question of like, well, how do we get this kid to start changing her underwear, right? Which is something we want to do. And I think that there’s a few points of entry. So the first thing I would say, and I would say this is, again, a very general thing, I think that rather than trying to corner a kid like, “Did you change your underwear?” If you know the kid didn’t, and this could also be like, “Did you walk the dog? Did you put the dishes in the dishwasher?” If you already know the answer, don’t give the kid a chance to lie to you about it. That’s not going to go well. So I think the first position I would have this parent take is to say to her, “Look, you and I both know you’re not changing your underwear.” Just start there and then say, “I don’t know why. Do you know why?”
But try to have it not be like you’re in trouble or you’re busted or just like, “What’s the why here?” And the kid might be like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” That’s often how kids will respond. And then I would have the parents say like, “Okay, here’s the deal. You have to change your underwear. It is part of how we take good care of our bodies.” It’s also part of how you grow up. And then I think there’s something really beautiful that to be said, which is you can say to kids about all sorts of things, we’ve taken great care of you and have loved doing it, bathing you as a baby, making sure you’re getting all nice, wonderful foods. Now that you’re 12 and older, it’s increasingly your job to take good care of you. And we’re here to cheer you on as you do this, but we’re starting to pass the torch.
And you changing your underwear every day is part of how you let us know that you’re maturing and growing up and increasingly able to care for yourself. So sort of put a positive spin on it as opposed to like, “What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you changing your underwear? You must change your underwear.” Put it in a broader developmental context. Okay. What do you think, Reena? I mean, does this sound realistic?

Reena Ninan:
For me personally, I felt like it was a phase and then something snapped in and I’m wondering if that snapped in part is just their peers all started taking better care of themselves and the message came home, but not everybody moves in packs like that. And I think that for those parents who feel like, okay, this stinky phase has gone on a little bit too much and they’re lying to me. And I know we kind of brushed aside the lying, but that is the one thing in parenting. I can deal with anything else, but I do not like to be lied to. And I’ve told this to my kids all the time. That’s the one thing that really irks me.
I just wonder what is it that would get through to the kid and change their behavior when they just really don’t care and see it as a problem?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. Or they’re in such a power struggle with their parent that they’re taking themselves down.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, that’s right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think you’re right. I think so option one is like all the words I said, and I totally get it if parent is like, “Yeah, no, I’m not going to say that to my kid.” Option two, I mean, dirty underwear or not clean under … It’s like, it’s not the greatest thing in the world. This is not going to cause … Will this matter when she’s 30? No, it will not matter when she’s 30. The parent may very well be in a position to be like, “You know what? I’m just going to wait till this kid clues in or somebody says something in a locker room. I’m going to let time run its course.” I think we can say with confidence this kid’s going to go down the aisle if she gets married in fresh underwear.
I mean, I think in terms of what we have to really, really throw down about, it’s not this, it’s not great, but is this worth having a knockdown drag out about? Probably not. And especially like you say, because switches flip where suddenly the kid’s like, “Oh, now I’ve decided I want to spend three hours in the shower,” which of course, then you’re like, “Oh, why did that change?” So you could definitely take that approach.

Reena Ninan:
So what about things like kids who don’t brush their teeth or really have bad acne and we know they’re not washing their face or taking care of themselves? Do you have any advice on how to approach these issues as well?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You do also see this, right? So what this girl in the letter’s dealing with, none of it will matter when she’s 30, but you also see, and I hear about kids and I’ll hear about it’s funny when I go to the dentist, I’ll have dentists be like, “Oh, help me with my adolescent patients who do not brush their teeth. What am I supposed to say to them?” I’ve had dentists ask me that. Orthodontists will have kids who have full braces- The rubber bands. The

Reena Ninan:
Retainer.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes. There’s also that, right? I mean, where kids are just not doing what they’re supposed to do. So let’s sort these in like kids not brushing versus … And then retainer and rubber bands are also super important. I think that’s where a lot of parents get into it with their kids. The kids not brushing, which is very real, that can be very consequential, right? Cavities. I have known of kids who’ve had to have their braces removed early because they weren’t caring for things and it was starting to become a hygiene issue in their mouth. That is where you get a physician to help you. You get a physician to sit with a kid and be like, “Here are the implications of what you are doing.” And really have the clinician lay out the dangers of them not brushing, not caring for their teeth in basic basic ways with or without braces.
Get a clinician on board. The nice thing about clinicians is they’re neutral. They’re like, “Dude, these are the facts of the science of this.” And so it doesn’t turn into a power struggle so much between the kid and the parent. Use a clinician for the really could have lasting consequences stuff. The retainers and the rubber bands.
Do your kids have braces? Are your kids there right now?

Reena Ninan:
Yes. Yes, they do. And thankfully they’ve been pretty good about it, but it’s hard. It’s a lot to remember.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That is the key. It is a lot to remember. It is a lot to remember. And I think taking that like it is part of a new routine. So I think that’s a place where we say, “This needs to happen.” And for rubber bands, it’s so that we can actually get you out of braces and I can stop hauling you to the orthodontist every six weeks. And then for retainers, it’s because we just put down all this money for your nice braces. And if you don’t wear your retainer, it’s all going to reverse. I think this is where you can start to have privileges. You having this wonderful orthodonture, which I know you may not love is a privilege. It’s your responsibility to take care of it. And other privileges are contingent on that. Getting to go do all these fun things you want to do is contingent on that.
I think you can take it pretty light. You don’t have to start there. You can say like, “Hey, what are the other systems that we can use to help you remember to do this?” But if you feel like the kid is actually making your life hard because they’re not taking care of their braces, like they’re about to waste all the money you just spent on braces or they’re about to have you driving them to the orthodontist for an extra year and a half because they won’t wear their rubber bands. I think you can start to put some leverage behind that.

Reena Ninan:
Well, this is great because it’s so frustrating when you’re going through it as a parent and you feel like nothing you do or say is going to make a difference. But I guess this too shall pass. Yes. You just don’t want to be in this stage.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, it’s not the most fun for sure.

Reena Ninan:
So what do you have for us, Lisa, for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So there’s a book I really admire called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a brilliant book. And he’s a great guy. I’ve actually met him. We’re both in here in Ohio. And what’s really cool about this book is, as often happens, James, who is not a psychologist by training, did a vastly better job than I’ve ever seen any psychologists do of translating the science of behavior change into a handy dandy, very good book. One of the things that runs through this book is this idea of habits are part of routines. You can’t change behavior if you don’t figure out where the habit fits in your routine. One of the things that I would say for families who are struggling with this, especially as kids, hygiene requirements increase and quickly and unexpectedly for them, start to talk with them about where will hair washing go in your week?
Is it a Monday, Wednesday, Saturday situation? And then how do we remember that it happens on Mondays? Do we put a Post-it note in your bathroom? Put more scaffolding in around the adoption of the new habit and attach it to current routines the kid has. Don’t just be like, “Dude, you got to wash your hair.” If they’re not doing it, they can’t do it. I think taking just a very pragmatic behavior change, habits are hard to change, new habits are hard to adopt approach might also just neutralize this a little bit and meet kids kind of where they are.

Reena Ninan:
That’s great advice, Lisa. Thank you so much. And I’m saying this as I wonder if our YouTube listeners and viewers know I didn’t wash my hair for two days, but I am clean everywhere else. I do want you to know.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, you don’t have to wash your hair every day, for sure.

Reena Ninan:
Thank you for that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Definitely. Of course, of course.

Reena Ninan:
And next week we’re going to talk about in-app video game purchases and gambling, what parents need to know. I’ll see you then.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.