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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 77767" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Crazymama, you said, "My difficult child will take a shower, but not use soap, or maybe use conditioner and no shampoo."</p><p></p><p>Richard Glover, a Sydney DJ and columnist, did some research on something he'd been told - that shampoo is a fairly modern invention; what did people do before they had shampoo?</p><p>According to the articles he found, shampoo actually makes hair oiler the more you use it. Shampoo removes the oil and the hair follicles compensate by pumping out more oil. The solution? Don't wash your hair with shampoo. Instead, you have to rinse it in warm water once a day, but nothing more. Of course it will get greasier but at about the six week mark it should have stabilised and your hair will feel perfectly OK - not too greasy or seeming dirty at all. because of course, it isn't dirty, you do wash it daily - just not with shampoo. The theory is, you won't need conditioner either, because the natural oils, once back in balance, do the job they were meant to do.</p><p></p><p>OK, that's the theory. So he decided to put it to the test, very publicly - he went on TV on a weekly basis and had the female reporters on the breakfast TV show give their own independent opinion. He talked about it on his radio show, he wrote about it in a newspaper column, he kept his blog updated. He also encouraged anybody else who was interested, to give it a go and report back via his web page on what they thought of how their hair was going, on the "Richard Glover challenge".</p><p></p><p>The result - surprising. Glover's hair DID get greasier but stabilised at about four weeks, it looked perfectly fine and the reporters who checked him over were astonished. But the 'Net poll - a lot of people said they had similar results to Glover, a lot of people couldn't stand themselves with greasy hair for long enough to wait for it to stabilise, a lot of people stuck it out and said it didn't work for them.</p><p>husband tried it. He found that it worked not badly for him, but he needed to use shampoo (a small amount) every couple of weeks. And seriously, I didn't have any problem with his hair, and I have a sensitive nose. Because any sweat gets washed out each night - water soluble. And the grease does balance a lot more than you think it could. But not enough for husband.</p><p>Here's a link - very funny but certainly not satire - this bloke is genuine.</p><p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-glover/the-no-shampoo-challenge/2007/03/22/1174153246888.html?page=fullpage" target="_blank">http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-glove...l?page=fullpage</a></p><p></p><p>Anyway, this doesn't solve the grotty kid problem. All I can do is share what's worked with us:</p><p>And it IS the boys who are worst. Never had a problem with the girls.</p><p>Boys begin to stink about a year before puberty hits. The problem escalates into mid-teens then continues into their twenties. It's an ongoing problem. Even clean teenage boys have their own distinctive smell ( said I have an incredibly sensitive nose!)</p><p>So, what to do?</p><p>First, assess the problem. Is the boy washing, but still smelling like a dead goanna? </p><p>* First, make sure he puts on deodorant IMMEDIATELY AFTER WASHING. Then make sure he also puts deodorant on EVERY MORNING. The deodorant MUST include a strong antiperspirant. There are some which smell good, some with no smell. You look for the percentage of active ingredient and let that be your guide.</p><p></p><p>* Next, check his clothes. If HE is clean but he puts on a stinky shirt, he has just wasted a wash. A stinky shirt will transfer its smell to his skin, to any other clothes he is wearing and to any furniture he's sitting in/leaning against. This includes the car.</p><p></p><p>* So you've checked all this, he's put on a clean shirt and he still stinks - then check the CLEAN shirts. If you have a dryer, pop in the clean shirts, one at a time. Smell each one as it is warmed up - sometimes the sweat smell remains from wash to wash and gets reactivated by body heat. There IS a cure... I'll tell you much later on in this post.</p><p></p><p>Now to the next layer of the problem - do you have a kid who refuses to wash properly? Who 'forgets' to wash his hair (or even give it a thorough rinse, Glover style)?</p><p>Here are several suggestions - we use a combination of them all.</p><p></p><p>* Letting him choose his preferred method of washing can help. This includes, as was already recommended, letting him choose the toiletries. A very important part of this is letting him choose his own antiperspirant STYLE - my adult men dislike roll-on deodorant because their armpit hairs get snagged (ouch). husband uses a pump spray, difficult child 1 uses a pressure pack famous brand (and so, therefore, difficult child 3 insists he has to use the same one, like big brother. We bought difficult child 3 the cheaper roll-on for now).</p><p></p><p>* The sniff test after every wash is a must. You can do it with a hug, surreptitiously, but if you have a known recalcitrant, there's no harm in being obvious. If they object, you say, "If I could trust you and you didn't habitually stink, I wouldn't have to do this. You think I LIKE doing this?"</p><p></p><p>* If the sniff test is positive for unclean and BO, the next steps are very important - </p><p>1) send him back to the bathroom to do it properly. Sniff test again. Keep doing this until he is clean - bathwater canot be recharged with more hot - if hetakes too long, a colder bath is fit punishment. Why should the globe suffer for his laziness?</p><p></p><p>Or alternatively, if you're in a hurry - remove clothes (at least the top half). If they've only been freshly put on clean, they MIGHT be OK. But in general, they go in the laundry. Next - wash again. Supervised wash. He's only washing the armpits and maybe back and chest - no stripping necessary. Wash with soap and water, dry with towel, use hair dryer to speed up the drying process and THEN put on antiperspirant deodorant.</p><p></p><p>Or if you're away from home and in a super hurry - I carry baby wash cloths in each bathroom and in the car. He gets handed a wash cloth and told to clean everything he can reach, and that MUST include armpits. No option to change clothes, no option to wash more thoroughly, but every bit helps. And if you REALLY want to ram the point home, get him to use the SAME washcloth on his face, AFTER he's done his pits. After all, he says his armpits aren't a problem, right?</p><p></p><p>2) Make sure he is dry and deodorised, then give him clean clothes to put on.</p><p></p><p>3) If time permits and he is STILL difficult, tell him you will wash him yourself, like a baby (and like you did when he was a baby) if he will not cooperate. And you will wash EVERYTHING. Taking mental notes maybe. I mean washing his hair as well. All of them, in every crevice. With your preferred Yardley of London jasmine and rose-scented products, maybe.</p><p></p><p>Now to perspiration smells - I swear by white vinegar. I had read about it and I tried it. You splash the vinegar on the sweat stain (also on the area that smells) and then soak the clothes (if they're really bad) in WARM (not hot) water and enzyme soak. I've also used a concentrated solution of normal washing detergent, you can then up-end the lot into the washing machine. If they're really bad it might take more tan one treatment, and you might need to do it every wash.</p><p>I find for normal upkeep, just the vinegar splash is enough, as t he clothes are put in the laundry. It doesn't matter if it dries, before being washed - it still does the trick.</p><p>Smelly car - vinegar again. easy child 2/difficult child 2 is currently deodorising BF2's car which his mother drove while chainsmoking. The car also smells of sweat and old food wrappers. It's taken a few months, but simply having small bottles of vinegar in the car, lids off while it is parked, is slowly deodorising it.</p><p></p><p>My own experience with the vinegar shows just how effective it is:</p><p></p><p>I had been given a small role in a local pantomime as Prince Charming (only had to come on right at the end, no lines or anything). This meant I had to wear a dark suit. We improvised with a pair of my black trousers, and a black coat from Wardrobe. But the previous wearer of the black coat had been a man who NEVER wore deodorant. I will refrain from making racist remarks, but culturally he was from a part of the world allegedly notorious for only bathing once a week - a colder climate, then he moves to Australia's heat. Plus he was a heavy smoker, as was his wife. </p><p>He had worn the coat in a summer heatwave production, when he played an escaped criminal on the run - literally. He had to run not only across the stage but around the entire theatre, over and over. He was wearing this heavy coat which alone would have been enough to make him sweat; and he was then doing a lot of unaccustomed exercise. He had played similar roles in the past and this was the coat he always wore. The coat had not been cleaned for the entire rehearsal/production run. I don't think it had been cleaned for decades. They then stored it in a plastic bag well away from the other costumes, the coat was so stinky. And the amount he and his wife smoked - I had actually had to leave active membership of this group because after just one rehearsal, my throat would feel red raw from the smoke they generated. I kid you not - I dropped in to visit them briefly once, you couldn't see one end of the living room, for the smoke. The walls were literally dripping with nicotine - yellow trickle stains streaked the walls. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. I've been around heavy smokers, but never like this. And I'd not seen chain smoking for some time - with this pair it was in tandem - they would light the next cigarette from the stub of the previous one and simply keep going. I never saw either of them without a smoke.</p><p></p><p>So t he props people gave me THIS coat, and said, "Could you arrange to have it cleaned? We'll reimburse you - there's a slight chance we might be able to save the coat. But don't worry if we can't get it clean - frankly, I think we should just throw it away, it's beyond all hope."</p><p>The coat was unbelievably appalling. But knowing how dry-cleaning sets some stains (and smells) I figured I couldn't lose anything by trying to wash it in the washing machine. I didn't risk any other garments, though. I put this coat in the stainless steel laundry tub on its own and saturated the whole thing with 2 litres of cheap generic white vinegar (I always keep a bottle in the laundry). Where normally only a splash is needed, this time I drenched the whole garment. The lining was thoroughly contaminated and even the outside of the coat stunk appallingly. A combination of BO and stale smoke.</p><p>Then I soaked the coat in a concentrated mix of laundry detergent.</p><p>After a day's soak, I drained it. What poured off was dark brown. Then I washed it in the washing machine and again, the rinse water was dark brown.</p><p>I soaked it again in vinegar (another bottle) and then another laundry detergent soak. This time the drained off soak water was a tan colour.</p><p>I washed the coat again, and the rinse water was only a little bit discoloured. The coat was hung outside to dry, it was horribly crumpled so I ironed it - a sure test for BO permanently in the fabric, because the heat of the iron will release the smell. And the was no smell! I had defeated the coat!</p><p>The drama group reimbursed me for two bottles of vinegar, much cheaper than dry cleaning, and a lot cheaper than buying another coat.</p><p></p><p>And ever since then - if I could get that coat clean and deodorised with nothing more than vinegar and a bit of extra laundry detergent, no teenager's BO will ever defeat me. Vinegar will work effectively on any protein smell or stain or any similar problem of animal origin, as long as you don't use hot water which will cook it in.</p><p></p><p>No rubbing needed. Just wet it and soak.</p><p></p><p>And one last point - the reason easy child 2/difficult child 2 is deodorising BF2's car is because I have made the kids accountable for their own clothes. The now realise that wasting a wash wastes their time and their effort. They use that bottle of vinegar I keep in the laundry - use it, or end up not wearing clothes with BO that hasn't washed out. They were made to wash poopy pants when they were little, made to change their own bed when they wet it, not in any sense of punishment but more a matter of personal responsibility. Poopy pants need to be washed, and it's not mummy who did it. The bed needs to be changed and the sooner the kid learns how, the easier it is on him when he wets the bed in the middle of the night - he can deal with it himself and tell mum in the morning, when the sheets are already in the laundry. A kid who did that for me got a big hug for being grown up and responsible, he certainly didn't get punished for wetting the bed or pooping his pants. These things happen.</p><p></p><p>So in their teens - extra responsibility has to creep in. Their body has changed the rules and is making them messy too easily, with greasy hair, resultant acne on their back and foreheads (from the hair grease - keep it clean, keeps the skin clearer) and the really ripe teen smell. And because it's THEIR smell, they often can't notice it. Or they're too busy to deal with it right now.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 1 went through a really bad patch when he would refuse to wash, refuse to wear clean or tidy clothes and simply refuse to cooperate in these things. I think he was actively working to keep everyone away from him (except his equally stinky friends). Even his teachers complained. We knew difficult child 1 was depressed - getting him onto antidepressants eased it enough so my above techniques were able to begin to bring about some change. </p><p>Then he got the volunteer job in the zoo - and would come home stinking of animals after shovelling manure all day. He WANTED to wash!</p><p></p><p>Good luck with this one.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 77767, member: 1991"] Crazymama, you said, "My difficult child will take a shower, but not use soap, or maybe use conditioner and no shampoo." Richard Glover, a Sydney DJ and columnist, did some research on something he'd been told - that shampoo is a fairly modern invention; what did people do before they had shampoo? According to the articles he found, shampoo actually makes hair oiler the more you use it. Shampoo removes the oil and the hair follicles compensate by pumping out more oil. The solution? Don't wash your hair with shampoo. Instead, you have to rinse it in warm water once a day, but nothing more. Of course it will get greasier but at about the six week mark it should have stabilised and your hair will feel perfectly OK - not too greasy or seeming dirty at all. because of course, it isn't dirty, you do wash it daily - just not with shampoo. The theory is, you won't need conditioner either, because the natural oils, once back in balance, do the job they were meant to do. OK, that's the theory. So he decided to put it to the test, very publicly - he went on TV on a weekly basis and had the female reporters on the breakfast TV show give their own independent opinion. He talked about it on his radio show, he wrote about it in a newspaper column, he kept his blog updated. He also encouraged anybody else who was interested, to give it a go and report back via his web page on what they thought of how their hair was going, on the "Richard Glover challenge". The result - surprising. Glover's hair DID get greasier but stabilised at about four weeks, it looked perfectly fine and the reporters who checked him over were astonished. But the 'Net poll - a lot of people said they had similar results to Glover, a lot of people couldn't stand themselves with greasy hair for long enough to wait for it to stabilise, a lot of people stuck it out and said it didn't work for them. husband tried it. He found that it worked not badly for him, but he needed to use shampoo (a small amount) every couple of weeks. And seriously, I didn't have any problem with his hair, and I have a sensitive nose. Because any sweat gets washed out each night - water soluble. And the grease does balance a lot more than you think it could. But not enough for husband. Here's a link - very funny but certainly not satire - this bloke is genuine. [url="http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-glover/the-no-shampoo-challenge/2007/03/22/1174153246888.html?page=fullpage"]http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-glove...l?page=fullpage[/url] Anyway, this doesn't solve the grotty kid problem. All I can do is share what's worked with us: And it IS the boys who are worst. Never had a problem with the girls. Boys begin to stink about a year before puberty hits. The problem escalates into mid-teens then continues into their twenties. It's an ongoing problem. Even clean teenage boys have their own distinctive smell ( said I have an incredibly sensitive nose!) So, what to do? First, assess the problem. Is the boy washing, but still smelling like a dead goanna? * First, make sure he puts on deodorant IMMEDIATELY AFTER WASHING. Then make sure he also puts deodorant on EVERY MORNING. The deodorant MUST include a strong antiperspirant. There are some which smell good, some with no smell. You look for the percentage of active ingredient and let that be your guide. * Next, check his clothes. If HE is clean but he puts on a stinky shirt, he has just wasted a wash. A stinky shirt will transfer its smell to his skin, to any other clothes he is wearing and to any furniture he's sitting in/leaning against. This includes the car. * So you've checked all this, he's put on a clean shirt and he still stinks - then check the CLEAN shirts. If you have a dryer, pop in the clean shirts, one at a time. Smell each one as it is warmed up - sometimes the sweat smell remains from wash to wash and gets reactivated by body heat. There IS a cure... I'll tell you much later on in this post. Now to the next layer of the problem - do you have a kid who refuses to wash properly? Who 'forgets' to wash his hair (or even give it a thorough rinse, Glover style)? Here are several suggestions - we use a combination of them all. * Letting him choose his preferred method of washing can help. This includes, as was already recommended, letting him choose the toiletries. A very important part of this is letting him choose his own antiperspirant STYLE - my adult men dislike roll-on deodorant because their armpit hairs get snagged (ouch). husband uses a pump spray, difficult child 1 uses a pressure pack famous brand (and so, therefore, difficult child 3 insists he has to use the same one, like big brother. We bought difficult child 3 the cheaper roll-on for now). * The sniff test after every wash is a must. You can do it with a hug, surreptitiously, but if you have a known recalcitrant, there's no harm in being obvious. If they object, you say, "If I could trust you and you didn't habitually stink, I wouldn't have to do this. You think I LIKE doing this?" * If the sniff test is positive for unclean and BO, the next steps are very important - 1) send him back to the bathroom to do it properly. Sniff test again. Keep doing this until he is clean - bathwater canot be recharged with more hot - if hetakes too long, a colder bath is fit punishment. Why should the globe suffer for his laziness? Or alternatively, if you're in a hurry - remove clothes (at least the top half). If they've only been freshly put on clean, they MIGHT be OK. But in general, they go in the laundry. Next - wash again. Supervised wash. He's only washing the armpits and maybe back and chest - no stripping necessary. Wash with soap and water, dry with towel, use hair dryer to speed up the drying process and THEN put on antiperspirant deodorant. Or if you're away from home and in a super hurry - I carry baby wash cloths in each bathroom and in the car. He gets handed a wash cloth and told to clean everything he can reach, and that MUST include armpits. No option to change clothes, no option to wash more thoroughly, but every bit helps. And if you REALLY want to ram the point home, get him to use the SAME washcloth on his face, AFTER he's done his pits. After all, he says his armpits aren't a problem, right? 2) Make sure he is dry and deodorised, then give him clean clothes to put on. 3) If time permits and he is STILL difficult, tell him you will wash him yourself, like a baby (and like you did when he was a baby) if he will not cooperate. And you will wash EVERYTHING. Taking mental notes maybe. I mean washing his hair as well. All of them, in every crevice. With your preferred Yardley of London jasmine and rose-scented products, maybe. Now to perspiration smells - I swear by white vinegar. I had read about it and I tried it. You splash the vinegar on the sweat stain (also on the area that smells) and then soak the clothes (if they're really bad) in WARM (not hot) water and enzyme soak. I've also used a concentrated solution of normal washing detergent, you can then up-end the lot into the washing machine. If they're really bad it might take more tan one treatment, and you might need to do it every wash. I find for normal upkeep, just the vinegar splash is enough, as t he clothes are put in the laundry. It doesn't matter if it dries, before being washed - it still does the trick. Smelly car - vinegar again. easy child 2/difficult child 2 is currently deodorising BF2's car which his mother drove while chainsmoking. The car also smells of sweat and old food wrappers. It's taken a few months, but simply having small bottles of vinegar in the car, lids off while it is parked, is slowly deodorising it. My own experience with the vinegar shows just how effective it is: I had been given a small role in a local pantomime as Prince Charming (only had to come on right at the end, no lines or anything). This meant I had to wear a dark suit. We improvised with a pair of my black trousers, and a black coat from Wardrobe. But the previous wearer of the black coat had been a man who NEVER wore deodorant. I will refrain from making racist remarks, but culturally he was from a part of the world allegedly notorious for only bathing once a week - a colder climate, then he moves to Australia's heat. Plus he was a heavy smoker, as was his wife. He had worn the coat in a summer heatwave production, when he played an escaped criminal on the run - literally. He had to run not only across the stage but around the entire theatre, over and over. He was wearing this heavy coat which alone would have been enough to make him sweat; and he was then doing a lot of unaccustomed exercise. He had played similar roles in the past and this was the coat he always wore. The coat had not been cleaned for the entire rehearsal/production run. I don't think it had been cleaned for decades. They then stored it in a plastic bag well away from the other costumes, the coat was so stinky. And the amount he and his wife smoked - I had actually had to leave active membership of this group because after just one rehearsal, my throat would feel red raw from the smoke they generated. I kid you not - I dropped in to visit them briefly once, you couldn't see one end of the living room, for the smoke. The walls were literally dripping with nicotine - yellow trickle stains streaked the walls. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. I've been around heavy smokers, but never like this. And I'd not seen chain smoking for some time - with this pair it was in tandem - they would light the next cigarette from the stub of the previous one and simply keep going. I never saw either of them without a smoke. So t he props people gave me THIS coat, and said, "Could you arrange to have it cleaned? We'll reimburse you - there's a slight chance we might be able to save the coat. But don't worry if we can't get it clean - frankly, I think we should just throw it away, it's beyond all hope." The coat was unbelievably appalling. But knowing how dry-cleaning sets some stains (and smells) I figured I couldn't lose anything by trying to wash it in the washing machine. I didn't risk any other garments, though. I put this coat in the stainless steel laundry tub on its own and saturated the whole thing with 2 litres of cheap generic white vinegar (I always keep a bottle in the laundry). Where normally only a splash is needed, this time I drenched the whole garment. The lining was thoroughly contaminated and even the outside of the coat stunk appallingly. A combination of BO and stale smoke. Then I soaked the coat in a concentrated mix of laundry detergent. After a day's soak, I drained it. What poured off was dark brown. Then I washed it in the washing machine and again, the rinse water was dark brown. I soaked it again in vinegar (another bottle) and then another laundry detergent soak. This time the drained off soak water was a tan colour. I washed the coat again, and the rinse water was only a little bit discoloured. The coat was hung outside to dry, it was horribly crumpled so I ironed it - a sure test for BO permanently in the fabric, because the heat of the iron will release the smell. And the was no smell! I had defeated the coat! The drama group reimbursed me for two bottles of vinegar, much cheaper than dry cleaning, and a lot cheaper than buying another coat. And ever since then - if I could get that coat clean and deodorised with nothing more than vinegar and a bit of extra laundry detergent, no teenager's BO will ever defeat me. Vinegar will work effectively on any protein smell or stain or any similar problem of animal origin, as long as you don't use hot water which will cook it in. No rubbing needed. Just wet it and soak. And one last point - the reason easy child 2/difficult child 2 is deodorising BF2's car is because I have made the kids accountable for their own clothes. The now realise that wasting a wash wastes their time and their effort. They use that bottle of vinegar I keep in the laundry - use it, or end up not wearing clothes with BO that hasn't washed out. They were made to wash poopy pants when they were little, made to change their own bed when they wet it, not in any sense of punishment but more a matter of personal responsibility. Poopy pants need to be washed, and it's not mummy who did it. The bed needs to be changed and the sooner the kid learns how, the easier it is on him when he wets the bed in the middle of the night - he can deal with it himself and tell mum in the morning, when the sheets are already in the laundry. A kid who did that for me got a big hug for being grown up and responsible, he certainly didn't get punished for wetting the bed or pooping his pants. These things happen. So in their teens - extra responsibility has to creep in. Their body has changed the rules and is making them messy too easily, with greasy hair, resultant acne on their back and foreheads (from the hair grease - keep it clean, keeps the skin clearer) and the really ripe teen smell. And because it's THEIR smell, they often can't notice it. Or they're too busy to deal with it right now. difficult child 1 went through a really bad patch when he would refuse to wash, refuse to wear clean or tidy clothes and simply refuse to cooperate in these things. I think he was actively working to keep everyone away from him (except his equally stinky friends). Even his teachers complained. We knew difficult child 1 was depressed - getting him onto antidepressants eased it enough so my above techniques were able to begin to bring about some change. Then he got the volunteer job in the zoo - and would come home stinking of animals after shovelling manure all day. He WANTED to wash! Good luck with this one. Marg [/QUOTE]
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