Harper Kingsley blog

Recording 5.m4a

I find myself thinking about that little video of those podcasters talking about not washing their children.

I’ll be minding my business, and thoughts of that video will creep to the forefront of my brain. It haunts me.

https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1572401448574402563

The very idea that there are people that aren’t bathing their small children. Like, these are little people that don’t know or understand that they REALLY NEED to bathe themselves for the benefit of their own health, and their caregivers are choosing not to bathe them. Because “I don’t want to interfere with the natural biome of their skin.”

My dude, even if you washed your skin in antibacterial soap, after about half an hour, your skin bacteria starts repopulating on the surface of your skin. Your body’s biome is not that delicate.

But not washing your child… not using a gentle scrubby cloth to massage away the dead skin and build up of dirt and crusted whatever human beings accumulate… That is some cruel child negligence, yo.

You are harming your child.

You are being a bad parent.

Bathe your children. It won’t kill them unless you use boiling water or harsh abrasive chemicals.

Like, for reals, you don’t have to scrub your baby with lava soap. There are gentle-for-baby formulations that you can and should be using.

I know, it was disheartening to find out that our country’s most trusted childhood baby shampoo turned out to be a lie. I mean, yeah, finding out that “No more tears” meant adding different chemicals that didn’t really stop the damage of soap so much as keeping the person from feeling the sting–and oh, maybe some carcinogenic chemicals that they knew were harmful–but that doesn’t mean NOT BATHING YOUR CHILD.

Use a gentle soap and a rag, don’t get soap in your baby’s face, wash away that smell of sour milk and baby poop. Like, not bathing your child means not enjoying that sweet baby scent that is 99% of the reason why people have babies in the first place.

Like, how horrible to offer to let someone hold your precious bundle of joy… And they get close enough to smell that bundle and go, “Nah, I’m good. You can keep holding it.”

It’s bad enough that adult people are choosing not to wash themselves, but they’re abusing their children and they’re so ignorant that they don’t even realize it.

Like, you’re willing to stand at a public bathroom sink and pantomime washing your hands! The only reason you would do that is if you know that you are doing something shameful and disgusting by not washing your hands.

I wash my hands before I use the toilet and after I use the toilet. And throughout the whole operation, I don’t touch anything in the public bathroom.

And sure, it might have seemed like the activities of a crazy person… But there are people faking that they’re washing their hands!

You know they immediately walk over and grab the door handle with their whole filthy paw. Just spreading HPV and urine residue everywhere that they go.

Disgusting.

If a sink is there for you to wash your hands, wash your hands.

Appreciate the PRIVILEGE of having clean water for sanitation.

700 kids just died from the measles in Zimbabwe.

And these American people are PROUDLY announcing to their followers that not only do they not wash their own hands after using the restroom, they don’t bathe their children, and whenever possible they FAKE that they follow basic hygiene.

“How can polio possible be back and paralyzing young people with their whole lives spread out before them?”

People are not vaccinating their children or bathing them. And then they’re taking themselves and their children into public places and using public facilities where they don’t wash their hands after taking a shit.

“But I always wash my hands if I take a shit! It’s only if I go pee that I don’t wash my hands!”

Who cares, imaginary argumentative idiot! You don’t wash your hands after you take a piss!

Whoohoo, the prize is for you: You’re still disgusting. Wash your hands after using the toilet! ESPECIALLY in public places.

And letting your kid splash around in a chlorinated pool does not count as their weekly bath. Like, there are showers to be used to wash off with after swimming! So if you soap them up and shampoo their hair after swimming, then you can excuse that you’ve already bathed them for the day. But if you just take them right out of the pool or ocean, towel them off, and that’s it…

You are not bathing your children and you are very wrong for it.

Chlorine residue will make your child stinky and itchy. Salt from the ocean will make your child itchy, and the amount of fish poop and dead sea life in the water can become a biohazard on your child’s skin.

WASH YOUR CHILDREN!

It is a PRIVILEGE to have clean water. It is a PRIVILEGE to have the opportunity to wash yourself and your children.

If you are the kind of person proudly proclaiming that you CHOOSE to not wash yourself or your children…

You are a product of privilege and you should really get in touch with reality.

It is a PRIVILEGE to not wash your children and NOT have child protective services come in and take them away from you.

It is a PRIVILEGE to not vaccinate your children and fully expect that medical insurance will be able to step in and magically save your child’s life, even as you vote against medicare and medicaid because you are a selfish SELFISH person.

It is a PRIVILEGE to so criminally neglect your children… and to be so very sure that there will be no negative consequences for your actions.

You have been raised with so much privilege and such a gigantic sense of entitlement, that you think you can do ANYTHING to your body and medical science will magically be able to fix everything with no lingering ill-effects.

Sorry you’ve bought into the lie of science FICTION movies, but no. We don’t have a cure for lots of terrible things.

There are countless illnesses that we are only able to keep from killing us by avoiding them. By washing our hands. By eating healthy food. By getting vaccinations and not rolling in filth.

People are bringing back terrible diseases that we don’t have a cure for, and there’s no reason for it.

FDR had a type of polio (scientists think he might have had a cousin of polio, which is why he was able to get back some movement and feeling) and he caught it from swimming in a lake.

How does polio get into a lake?

People were shitting in the lake water.

That’s where polio comes from. Shit.

So bathe your filthy children before you set them loose amongst the public, or keep them locked up in your house. For the safety of everyone else.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a cost-effective “won’t destroy my precious darling’s skin biome” soap to use for bathing your children: unscented Castile soap.

They have Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap for sale on Amazon. It’s the “Baby Unscented” because there’s no added essential oils that might irritate your baby’s delicate skin (and it can be used for bathing dogs and cats as well, though look up the amount to water it down). => Amazon ADLINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008MOK95W/?tag=kimichee-20 <= One bottle can go a long way, as you mix it with water.

I have a foaming hand dispenser, and I’ve been using Castile soap in it with no problem. You fill it with a 1:4 ratio of Castile soap and water (1/5th soap, 4/5ths water) and you’ll get a good handful of foam with each pump.

---

I think the reason why the story of people not washing their children sticks in my head so much is it brings up memories of the worst case of child neglect I’ve ever seen in my life. And the way I didn’t handle the situation the way that I would now.

For reals: If I saw that shit now, I would call child protective services on that family in a minute.

But I was still a kid, not even 18, and I didn’t even think to do more than I did. And it bothers me now that I’m older, to think about it, because I don’t know if that child is alive or dead. She should be a grown up now, but for all I know, she’s long dead. And that makes my heart hurt to think about it.

And it wasn’t like they were trying to kill her. They weren’t beating her or anything. They were simply very negligent people concerning the life of their then very small child.

I remember, we were visiting my mom for the summer and my little sister went to the playground attached to the apartment complex where my mom was living. And she met a girl about her age, and the two of them would hang out while I got to do whatever I wanted. (Which meant a lot of sleeping, lol.)

And one afternoon I went to the playground to check on my sister, and she was playing with that girl and that girl’s two younger siblings on the playground equipment. And they had a toddler with them that was trying so hard to join in even though she was much younger, maybe 2 at the most.

And that little baby had the whitest blond hair I’ve ever seen. And her baby skin was pale and pink. She was like the stereotype of white babies: blond hair, blue eyes, baby pale skin.

And it was Nevada. And that baby was out there with those kids all day with no sunblock, no hat. Just a little tank top shirt, a pull up, and little strappy sandals. Nothing else, against the brutal 100-degree heat and a playground with no shade over it.

Her skin was so red. I immediately told those kids we had to take her home. That their mom should take her to the emergency clinic IMMEDIATELY.

I could see the redness of her scalp through her baby thin white curls. Thinking back, it horrifies me because it looked like her skin was bubbling up with blisters.

Every bit of her was bright red. And she was sweating. But it was such a fresh burning that the pain hadn’t hit yet, you know?

And I think about her now, and I don’t know if that baby didn’t die from her sunburn. We went home before we ever saw those kids again.

But I remember walking those kids back to their apartment to get help for that baby, and there was a man sleeping on the couch and the mom was in the bedroom.

Those negligent people trusted that their pre-teen children would babysit their sister, and those kids had no idea what they were doing.

And it bothers me. To think of that little baby. Of her lobster red skin and the blisters visibly forming on her scalp.

And I hope she’s alive.

And I’m so angry at those parents. Not just for possibly killing their child.

But for forcing me to have to regret not helping that baby. For involving me in their criminal negligence so that now, years and years later, the guilt of that time is still with me.

And it’s like, when you abuse your children, it doesn’t just effect your children and your family and the generations of your family to come. It also effects the people forced to deal with your complete and utter bullshit.

I should not have thoughts of that baby haunting my mind. Because there’s nothing I can do about it now. No resolution for the horrible way it makes me feel.

Because I don’t know that family’s name. I don’t know that baby’s name. And so, in my mind, that baby could have died from those burns and IT’S MY FAULT BECAUSE I DIDN’T CALL AN AMBULANCE.

Because I didn’t want to get my sister’s friend’s mom in trouble. Because I didn’t think about how completely deadly a sunburn like that can be, ESPECIALLY for a very young child.

It eats away at me. Thinking of that baby.

And so whenever I hear the weirdos of the world standing up in public to PROUDLY proclaim that they neglect their children…

I hate them SO MUCH.

For their negligence. For their wasted privilege. For their sheer brutal stupidity as they KNOW BETTER but CHOOSE to do the wrongest of wrong things “just because.”

I hate them. Because they keep involving the rest of us in their evil.

~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
https://twitter.com/harperkingsley0
https://paypal.me/harperkingsley
https://kimichee.com.
https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.
https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.
https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.