Many children enjoy bath time, but some don’t. To help soothe their child’s tantrums and improve their bath experience, many parents introduce bath toys into their child’s bath routine. Having bath toys give your child the chance to relax, unwind, and have fun! However there are more to it than just having fun, bath play gives your child many benefits as a lot of skills get developed during bath time.
Benefits of bath time with toys
- Spend quality time – Bath time gives parents and caretakers the opportunity to spend quality time with their children. During bath time, parents can together play with their child, while talking and singing to them. This too gives working parents the chance to bond with their child after a long day of working and make their child feels loved and appreciated.
- Develop skills – Bath play allows your child to build skills. By squeezing, touching, and splashing their bath toys, they can improve their fine motor skills. They also learn more about colours, shapes, and volume by interacting with the unique bath toys while developing their social skills by talking to their parents. Bath time also could help develop your child’s sensory skills as it gives your child’s senses a lot of attention, from feeling the water on her skin, learning to distinguish different temperatures, and being touched while you wash and dry them.
- Independence – Bath time with toys can encourage your child to build self-care skills, from helping to wash your child’s body to dry them off. And since bath time can get a bit messy, parents like to clean and tidy up the bath space once the child is finished playing. Once your child gets used to the process of cleaning up the toys and draining out the water after bath time, they can take these organizational skills with them as they grow.
With all the benefits bath toys have, they, unfortunately, have a downside too which is becoming breeding grounds for moulds, fungi, and bacteria – some of which can make your child fall sick. Although mould is harmful when ingested, the amount of mould present in contaminated bathwater from mouldy bath toys is usually not enough to make your child sick. However, if your child experiences nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, or an upset stomach, those could be the effects of ingesting mould, just like food poisoning from mouldy food.
To avoid this from happening, parents can and should clean bath toys regularly to prevent mould from growing on them or inside them by using a toy cleaner or a mixture of vinegar/bleach with water. Soak the toys for a good minute and ensure to squeeze all the liquid out of the bath toy. Then, store them in a dry place until they need to be used at bath time.
Parents also can ensure to buy fully-sealed bath toys. But, if you have bought bath toys with holes, you can seal them with a glue gun before your child starts using them to help prevent mould build-up.
Here are some bath toys that you can purchase on Babydash:
