How to Teach a Child to Wash Their Hands Properly

Prevent illness in your family by teaching everyone to wash their hands properly.

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Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• patience
• good common sense
• soap

1. Start in the bathroom. Explain to the child that when we go to the bathroom, we end up with germs on our hands. Try to use words they understand. You may want to say "peepee and poop have yucky germs in them that can make us sick".

2. Then explain that washing our hands with warm water and soap is a good way to get rid of the germs. If you want, you can gradually use words like "viruses" or "bacteria" if you want them to be more scientific about it.

3. Wash your hands at the same time so the child has a model to follow. I like to tell the child to "make a lot of bubbles" with the soap. When they do, it ensures that they are washing vigorously enough.

4. Encourage the child to "cover all of the germs" with soap. This helps you know that their entire hand is clean, not just the palms of the hands. Remember, children put their fingers in their mouths; you don't want viruses to lurk there.

5. Studies have shown that good hand-drying is also very important to eliminating germs. Teach your children to dry their hands with a clean towel.

Tips & Warnings

• Once they've mastered the reason they wash their hands and the proper technique, extend the practice outside of the bathroom. Teach them to wash their hands before they help you cook, before they eat, when they sneeze, etc.
• To make sure they wash their hands long enough, sing the ABCs with them. When the song is over their hands are clean. You can use any song about 30 seconds long.
• Be sure to supervise until they've mastered hand-washing. Otherwise they may skip the soap!

Resources

• How to Get Over a Cold Faster