In amazing news for parents: Kids only need a bath twice a week, tops.

If you are the parents of kids under, let’s say… eight, what does bath time look like in your house?

Chances are, you spend every evening screaming at the top of your lungs while begging, bribing and blackmailing your kids to get in the damn water. Dragging out every bath toy under the sun. (Whatever happened to the humble rubber ducky?) And mopping up the tsunami of overflowing soapy bathwater because your kid thought it was a fab idea to tip an entire bottle of bubble bath in then turn on the spa jets.

Before you march your kids outside, line them up and hose them down, we have some good news for you.

Kids can go days on end without a bath and it won’t kill them. In fact, some experts now say they only need a bath once or twice a week!

Listen: Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo discuss the fantastic news on This Glorious Mess.

Yep, forget flooding the halls every night. Daily washes are entirely unnecessary and a big fat myth invented to make parents’ lives hell.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, kids aged six to 11 only need one or two baths a week to stay squeaky clean.  Daily baths are fine if that’s your thing, but basically you’re wasting your time and theirs.

Dermatologists recommend bathing kids when they get dirty, go for a swim, get sweaty or start to stink. Which is all pretty self explanatory, really. But otherwise, you can ease up on the nightly power struggle.

Let’s be clear though. Your sweaty, hormonal teenager needs a shower every. single. day. And don’t let him try and convince you otherwise.

And this does not mean hygiene can go out the window either. Encourage good hand-washing behaviour (fun fact – kids should be washing their hands for the length of time it takes to sing happy birthday twice.) And brushing their teeth is a non-negotiable twice daily activity, minimum.

Who knows why kids are so reluctant to bathe? What kind of monster hates baths? Baths are luxurious moments of comfort, escapism and bubbly decadence in the day. And who wants to be the smelly kid? Someone needs to tell these little tackers that if their buddies always sit a metre away, that’s probably a sign they need to get in the tub and scrubba-dub-dub.

Although to be fair, if your mum still sat next to you and pointed out when you missed a spot behind your ear, you probably wouldn’t be in any hurry to strip off and dive in either.

Listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here:

You can buy any book mentioned on our podcasts from iBooks at apple.co/mamamia, where you can also subscribe to all our other shows in one place.

This content was created with thanks to our brand partner KFC.