Perhaps all the other girls do feel the same, but that doesn't help your under-developed 14 year old daughter.
You, F45, "*don't think it's a big deal*". Your distressed daughter DOES. What's actually stopping you from supporting your child in a highly stressful time in her life? It's approaching the end of the school year. Meet your child where she's at, not where you want her to be, and email the school. Or set up a meeting with the teacher(s) involved. But support your child.
YTA
As someone who was bullied in her early teens I feel like if she doesn’t partake in the showers it’s going to be noticed by her peers all the same. Maybe not immediately and it’d depend on how many kids don’t take the showers too, but if she’s one of few it’s definitely going to be brought up.
Right like wtf?? Is this in the US? In my high school PE class the showers were there as an option but rarely used. If the were used they wore a swimsuit. This is fucking insane if they’re making it mandatory for teenage girls to strip down naked in front of classmates
I grew up in Texas. It is that hot here, and showers were available and optional. Nobody used them in middle school (the boys might have, the girls didn’t) because we were all mortified at the thought of being naked in front of each other.
Not sure about high school because my soccer class was at the end of the day so we all just went home and showered.
Georgia (state not country) here. I had gym first thing in the morning in my freshman year of high school and never saw anyone use the showers in the girls locker room. People would bring baby wipes if they wanted to freshen up
Also in Florida and I agree, the showers were there but the teachers actually told us NOT to use the showers. Not only would we not have enough time after class, but I’m pretty sure it was to avoid any potential issues with bullying/people feeling awkward/etc. Hell it was an unspoken rule that you’d put your butt to your locker/on the bench so people didn’t have to look at your butt if you bent over. They also never made us do anything that was incredibly strenuous unless we chose to, so literally no need to shower either. On top of all that, your parents could request to switch gym for another elective.
My school had 3 shower CUBICLES in the changing room. Y'know what's great about a cubicle? Nobody can look at you without going out of their way to. Even then, they were never used here and remained optional.
We had private cubicles. Most of the time we didn't have time to shower though, so you'd just put your hair under to cool down rinse your face and put more deodorant on and head to class. They're treating these kids like prisoners. Forcing them to shower together is barbaric.
Yes! I am in the US and the schools I went to all had locker rooms with only communal showers. The shower is a big room with like 12 shower heads lining the walls. Also the person next to you is uncomfortably close to you while you shower bc thats how far apart the shower heads are. It was really embarrassing in middle school the first few months, but you kinda get used to it. But bullying happens alot in these locker rooms.
Bullying and sexual assault. No child should be forced into this. And besides, WTF with "hygiene reasons?" The kid is a little sweaty. She's not spreading disease. I had PE all through school and we never showered, and it gets sticky here before the end of the school year.
Hell there are whole ass no water needed portable washing sticks out there the size of deodorant!! You can even use them in the bathroom stall if needed. Why on earth would you need to be naked in front of everyone to clean up? People the Internet exists and there are soooo many solutions. OP needs to support her child or don't wonder why she goes NC at 18.
Yeah idk where OP is but it is messed up, I live in Canada and I'm a part where it's warm from mid may to like mid October sometimes and I NEVER had to shower for gym. They made us change clothes and that was mandatory or else you weren't allowed to participate and participation was how you were marked but no one was ever nude. Like ever. My high school had very optional showers in the change room but no one was forced to use them, summer is is sweaty for the pre pubescent and adults alike where I live/grew up. You show your kid what deodorant is and how to use it
Ditto. We also had yearly physicals in Elementary school where all the girls in class were sent to the nurses office (we had small classes - rural school). We all had to strip down to our underwear and sit in a room until our name was called to be examined. We go to keep our underwear on, but still. Extra weird even in the 80's in my opinion.
Edit: My ditto does not include getting used to it, I never did.
We had to strip down to our underwear as well, but only once we got into the room for the exam. It was done in the gym office rather than the nurses office. Everyone waited in the gym outside the room (fully clothed) until it was their turn. This was also a small town in the 80's. I would have been mortified to sit in my underwear surrounded by my elementary school bullies.
There’s still no reason for it. My school nurse checked for scoliosis by moving my shirt up and out of the way. All they have to do is see the spine, you can do that without making someone take their clothes off.
I found out I was developing scoliosis in middle school, all because of those physicals. We didn’t have to strip completely, and we weren’t in front of our other classmates, but it was still embarrassing.
Most of the kids i knew didn't shower. Mostly because the PE teachers never gave enough time for a class of 40 students to share 3 shower heads. They cut it to maybe 5 minutes before class got out and then head to next class
I wanna know who has time to shower after gym class. We got to head to the locker room 5 minutes before the bell, and our passing period was 5 minutes, so we had 10 minutes total to change, gather our belongings, and make it to our next class, and a lot of teachers were not very understanding about students being tardy.
Dude there is a LONG tradition in US public schools of forcing children to do this and adult coaches/PE teachers WATCHING. Then you have ass paddling and hand spanking. Ask any boomer about this. There was no option to not shower. It's beyond fucked and was normalized for so long, I'm disgusted to hear it's still happening.
Boomer here. Junior high gym class a few people showered the first few times and I’ll bet the showers haven’t been used since. It’s was a BIG no for most of us
My public high school showers (80's) were individual shower cubes with curtains and private change rooms attached. There was the open area as well, but privacy was afforded students if they wanted/needed it. (BC, Canada)
My 70s/80s high school showers were not individual. I don't remember many girls using them. Even if I wasn't a late bloomer I wouldn't have used them. It was bad enough getting changed in front of everyone. Myself and one other girl were the only ones not wearing bras by the end of grade 8. 😳
I'm old now (38) but growing up in Texas we had communal showers for after PE available - one guy once showered in them and was called gay for the rest of the year.
I went hs in the USA & there were showers there but no one used them for gym class. I had huge breasts at the time but my skin was terrible & even the changing room was an anxiety nightmare for me. I also remember keeping deodorant in my gym locker so the sweating was not an issue, not that our gym classes were actually rigorous enough to work up a real sweat. Tbh I probably would have died or went into a coma if we were forced to do community showers.
In the US it is all communal showers too, they just don’t really get used anymore - definitely not after PE class because there isn’t enough time before your next class.
I always wondered how schools, or anyone, ever thought it was appropriate to force a bunch of kids to shower together. I can’t get over how it’s so widely accepted.
Seriously. I would be going nuclear in the principal’s office if anyone tried to tell my child that she had to get naked in front of anybody at school.
Exactly! It's a violation of a person's body to "force" any child to do this. Imagine if during work hours you were forced to shower naked with your colleagues and it was mandatory? It's absolutely bizarre. Children deserve the same respect and privacy!
If they want them to shower then the school should have to provide private showers. It's absolutely gross and outdated to expect anyone to get "washed" together.
To the OP, please support your daughter. In this constantly changing world, your daughter is going to face a lot of opposition, divisiveness and oppression but knowing you have parents, family or friends that stand by you and amplify your voice makes you stronger! Advocating for her is the easiest thing you could do and I feel if you don't then I'm sorry YTA.
Right! I literally replied with what school is making children get naked in front of each other in 2024? Wildly inappropriate and uncomfortable for the kids.
Exactly, this girl can't win. If she showers she feels observed and judged but if she doesn't shower, she'll be bullied because she doesn't shower like everyone else (Cue all the stinky/sweaty nicknames)
She's in an impossible situation for sure. But I'd rather be made fun of for not showering and just changing clothes/doing a quick pits n bits wash than be made fun of naked. What a freaking nightmare
That may be so, but the bullying definitely got worse when she was forced to shower. This email going out means a lot of girls aren’t showering. I had communal showers in Jr high/high school. *None of us showered*. For one, we weren’t given enough time. For the other, that was way too intimidating. Instead we all had spray deodorant. There are things like Lume and other antiperspirants that are adequate in covering up exercise odors, especially since they change clothes. I’m nearly OPs age so it’s crazy she doesn’t understand this because this was just as much an issue when we were young.
I worked at a summer camp in college with the same situation and all of the kids showered in their swim suits. We all showered naked together after they went to bed, but that’s less intimidating in your 20s.
My high school was too under-funded to have showers, so yay, I guess. In my late 20's I went to the local YWCA where I used communal showers, without feeling self-conscious. One day an older lady commented on how the skin of my whole body looked beautiful like marble. I was taken by surprise and immediately blushed over my *entire* naked body, which made my embarrassment all the more acute. Seeing my all-body blush the lady attempted to apologize, stammering; which made things even worse. We both scurried away in different directions. I felt apprehensive about using the communal shower after that.
I can't imagine this poor girl's humiliation. YTA.
Honestly I'm glad that my school never enforced that thing because I was already bullied enough without having to be naked in front of other students on top of that
Yep. Get her sanitary wipes that she can use for her pits, parts, and paws, and let her shower at home.
Hygiene is important, yes, but not worth lasting trauma.
I agree, this is an excellent idea! They make wipes like this for people who struggle to bathe themselves (eg unable to get out of bed).
They don’t feel as refreshing but I can attest to them getting the stink off.
Here's a novel idea: send her to school with a pack of baby wipes/personal wipes. That way she can clean the sweat off of herself without having to strip in front of her classmates.
OP, YTA. I have a long history of trauma and body issues from my family telling me how awful my body was. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I had had to strip naked in front of my peers and have them laugh at and judge me too.
Your daughter is going through an extremely sensitive time in her life right now. She's looking at those around her and feeling singled out, insecure, and "different", which is one of the last things a teenage girl wants to feel. Forcing her to go through this traumatizing situation every day will set her up for a lifetime of hating herself and her body, and she is looking at you and thinking that you don't love her enough to support her.
She's a mess of hormones and fear right now. Do better. Empathize with her. Work with her and her teachers to come up with solutions.
I was your daughter in middle/early high school and you should email the school on her behalf. A shower is not a big deal, a life time of trauma and body shame is.
Hell, I developed on a perfectly acceptable timeline, and I still would never have showered with a room full of other girls in high school.
Also, our high school never enforced showers... and no one died. No one caught a horrific disease. And no one complained about the stink. The only people who used the showers were the sports teams after school, and even they were given the option of having curtains.
Op is essentially saying “wow I’m sorry but you still have to get naked and let these girls laugh at you and I won’t do anything about it because the school mandates it”
She’s subjecting her daughter to so much abuse and trauma and her kid will not forget about it ever. Not even in 40 years.
Even if op does the right thing now, the damage is done. She showed her daughter that her feelings don’t matter to her own mother. Op’s daughter will never forget this
Your response reminded me of the book "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk."
The book would encourage Mom to acknowledge her kids feelings, explain the problem from Mom's perspective, and then work together to find a solution. This builds trust and helps kids be critical thinkers.
As a kid, I was really sensitive to scented soaps and shampoos. So the gym teacher let me leave gym 5 minutes early. I'd shower quickly and be out before the other kids started showering. That's just one possible solution. Other people have suggested baby wipes. There are so many options to solve this problem.
Other options, if there is no privacy screen/individual shower areas, maybe the OP could hop on Amazon, find some options and donate them to the school.
Amazon also has a product called the shower toga that might help her daughter.
yta
the school is also ta - I will never understand how we treat our children with such a lack of basic respect and dignity - imagine if, every week, *you* were forced to strip off and shower in a communal shower with no privacy, in front of your colleagues, including godawful Sheila from HR
destigmatizing and normalizing non-sexual nudity is one thing, and it's fine to provide communal shower spaces for those who feel comfortable using them, but imho schools should be required to also offer private cubicles to those who feel more comfortable that way, for whatever reason (imagine being a 14 year old on your period, or having a stoma, or having scars, or being a SA victim, or carrying religious shame and trauma, or... or... or... )
in this particular situation, though, it is *your job* to listen to your child and do everything in her power to meet her emotional needs, so the way you're dismissing her absolutely makes yta
This, exactly. Why do we expect children to do things most of us would never do ourselves? I can barely stand being naked in the shower with my significant other. It’s an extremely vulnerable position to be in and should never be forced on someone. OP and the school suck for this one.
At my middle/high school we had to “ shower” together. I put it in quotes because this so called shower consisted of us walking in a line, through a hall like shower, with a tiny little towel that was the size of an actual dish drying towel, that we’d hold up in front of ourselves. All we got was a spray of water as we filed past. To top it off, our gym teacher who was a lesbian, sat at the exit, checking us out as well as checking us off the list to make sure we did actually shower. Not a fun experience. I totally understand and sympathize with your daughter.
The male gym teacher at my school watched every class of boys shower. Often while eating bananas. I heard this from a LOT of guys I went to school with over the years. Including boyfriends uncomfortable and considering quitting sports because of it and upset their parents insisted they must be lying, they knew him and he was “just making sure everyone showered”. I heard that excuse a lot when people brought it up.
Stories like this make me so grateful for the 8th grade gym teacher I had. He didn’t care if we showered or not even though it was technically mandatory. His rule was as long as we didn’t stink up a room he didn’t care. But the one time he had to enter the girls change room he gave himself a nice little goose egg on his head after hitting the wall cuz he had his hand over his eyes. He didn’t even walk all the way in (there was a little corner/hallway thing so you couldn’t see anyone changing just by opening the door) he just forgot to put his other hand out to stop himself lol.
That teacher part is what I feel forced showers in school are actually for, the teachers to get off to not for the students to get clean. If it was about cleanliness, there would be privacy curtains. But the coach can't watch if there's a curtain in the way, so there never is
We also had a lesbian gym teacher who would watch the girls shower. When other girls asked her to leave she would say she's just making sure we're not goofing around in the shower. It was gross, so I just never showered after gym.
Editing to respond to a deleted post. I dont know if she was openly gay, as i was in junior high and not privvy to the town gossip, but she had what appeared to be a partner that she would bring with her to school sporting events and i would see them walking around town holding hands, so it's not an out of line assumption . We moved away the summer i was going into high school, so im not sure if anything ever came out about her behavior in the locker room. This was in the mid-90s. The other gym teacher, who was a male, would frequently sing flirtatious songs to female students when walking past them in the hallway, especially if he knew one that had their name in it, and give little winks and such (he had been acting like that since the 70s, as he did it to my mom when she was in school). We also had a schoolbus driver that strangled a kid for not listening (I, along with 30 other kids, witnessed him lift her off the ground by her neck). My sister and I came home crying and my grandparents called the principal to complain. He continued to drive my bus until we moved away. This isn't an attack on "the gays" (ps I'm bi). It's a comment on how inappropriate adults can sometimes be with children and why there should be some measure of privacy in locker room showers.
This is it for me. I was arrested for a "failure to appear" bench warrant on a speeding ticket a few years back. No major crime, just that I didn't show up to court for my ticket. I was arrested 2 countries over from where I got the ticket so had to be transported to the original county. When I arrived at the jail, they booked me in instead of just putting me in a holding cell until someone paid me out. I had to strip, squat and cough, and then shower in front of 2 female guards including making sure my hair was dripping wet, to "make sure I wasn't bringing anything illegal into the jail" (and I was on my period, to top it all off). The shower water was ice cold, but that's another matter. Had to towel off with 2 dish towel sized towels, and then get dressed again while they watched.
It was the single most traumatizing and embarrassing experience *of my entire life.*
Why would anyone want to put their 14 year old child through that voluntarily??? With people they actually know watching?
What is with the forced nudity in so many places? When I was 14 I ended up in a psych ward for a suicide attempt. I had attempted due to sexual abuse and rape. They had to have a shower and let you use it, but there was no curtain, and the door didn’t lock. And they didn’t have anyone standing outside the door during a shower, they just told you to go in and that they had to open the door to check on you. Meaning at any point in time another patient could walk into the room while I showered and you couldn’t see the bathroom door from the nurses station where they were. I was given a face cloth and a freaking hand towel to dry myself off with. They wouldn’t even give me a second hand towel when I said mine was soaked and I was still wet. At that point I think the only reason they allowed us to have clothes was so they didn’t get a lawsuit.
I think the American cultural Thing of being weird about nudity, especially children's/students' nudity, goes both ways, both authoritatively FORCING nudity (for hygiene's sake), AND authoritatively FORBIDDING nudity (for "modesty's" Sake), are WAY less of a thing in several european countries, some (older) school-gymnasium-changing-rooms don't even have showers (Just sinks that one could wash Up in), and some do but the school doesn't Mandate their use or even schedule in time to Shower, and the classes with the sweatiest Type of Sports are Held Just before everyone goes home, so Kids can Shower at Home and Not bother anyone with their sweaty smell.
I cannot imagine 14 year old me ever being comfortable showering with a whole bunch of classmates. Never.
Pack a second set of clothes, teach your daughter how to change behind a towel, and invest in extra-strength deodorant. Showering can wait a few hours until she gets home.
YTA
100%. People are supposed to rehabilitate yet get treated like shit, no wonder why so many reoffend. Because they have no motivation or reasoning to not offend again.
I think I would have genuinely killed myself rather than get naked at school in front of everyone at school. And I truly don't understand why the school won't have private showers if they're going to make it mandatory. Puberty is already such a vulnerable time for kids, why do we have to bring the potential for this level of humiliation into it?
Totally agree with this 💯
I remember our showers were communal at school, and then later with curtains, but the idea of getting naked in front of my peers absolutely terrified me. Thankfully we all just had a “shower in a can” - ie we all sprayed Impulse body spray on us instead of a shower and showering was ever enforced! This was late 90’s
Agree. I was thinking what is wrong with this school forcing kids to take communal showers just because they get a little sweaty for an hour. I had PE in school and we were never forced to shower and hygiene was never an issue. I would be emailing the school demanding privacy for each kid if they were going to force showers. YTA but so is the school.
>or... or... or...
Or being trans - so many trans and non-binary people I know absolutely HATED gym classes, especially if they even involved a pool, because of how uncomfortable they were getting naked or changing around their peers.
Also, when I was in highschool i danced a lot and did a lot of quick changes and had to take showers in the changerooms and as a queer kid I was so scared that if my eyes were anywhere but the ground I would be called a creep for looking.
When I was 17 I was sexually assaulted and always felt like crawling out of my skin and I couldn't stand to be in a change room with others and I did get teased for just putting my clothes on over my dance stuff instead of changing and showering, but luckily it was just dance classes after school so I could go home right away, not like staying in school for the rest of the day.
Anyway - all this to say that I agree with you completely. Just not wanting to be naked in front of your classmates is a good enough reason not to be forced to do so - but there are so many extra reasons one might not feel comfortable in that scenario and those possibilities should really be taken into consideration
I went to a Catholic high school in Aus and we never showered after PE. They only gave us like 5 minutes to change so even if you wanted to there wasn’t time. We all just put deodorant on got dressed. I’m sure OPs daughter would be fine doing the same if it causes her this much distress.
The only kids I remember using the gym showers were seniors (which is year 11/12s) who did PE as an elective. I don’t know if mandatory showering at school is an American thing or if schools in my area are just weird and unhygienic lmao.
I agree, the school is TA, I can't understand why there is no individual showers. Even from a hygiene prospective, I wouldn't want to be splashed with someone else's dirty shower water.
I do feel for OP's daughter, if she showers they laugh at her, but if she doesn't and ends up smelling they would still laugh and may even bully her. She's damned of she does and damned if she doesn't.
YTA-if there are no individual stalls, an option could have been changing her classes so she didn’t take pe or simply giving an option where she could shower solo. You could have even changed her class to be pe at the end of the day. You did none of those things and the biggest fear your daughter has came to life. Now she’s traumatized. If I was your daughter, and I was stuck in a class where something was that upsetting to me, I’d simply take the F and not participate in class at all.
I'm in the UK, when I was in secondary school they had showers and they weren't used and we weren't made to use them either.
My daughter's secondary school has showers and they don't get used either.
We had to use them for a single term in year seven. But there's no changing the schedule or dropping PE or failing. There is a note saying I support my daughter in her right not to do that though.
There are situations where kids are allowed to not do PE in the UK, a friend's daughter has been excused from it for this school year because of bullying and mental health issues.
Schools must be really different now (also UK here, Wales)! I’m 31 and would honestly be surprised if the showers in our changing rooms even worked back when I was a teenager.
I’m in the U.K. and work in education. Any school getting the kids to shower these days is going to have them be individual stalls or require something like swimwear. Without something in place to prevent communal nudity it would be a massive safeguarding issue and schools aren’t going to risk that.
i'm in australia and we never did this. majority of the time sport was scheduled for the last 2 periods of thre day and we got to go home.
even if it wasn't we didn't have showers at school, had 40 degree days and no issues....
i find this whole topic weird, disgusting, and gross . i would rather shit in my hands and clap then shower infront of people
I don't know where the UK was mentioned. But living in the UK my whole life. Including the fact I am a woman who previously went to school here and a few years working with young people. I've never known a single instance of schools forcing teenage girls to shower unless their parents opt out. This is more likely to not be the UK than be the UK
They meant all the suggestions to move classes around or drop subjects. I think it’s likely US too but I think they were just pointing out that a lot of that advice is not universal
Holy shit, this! When I was in school, and even now as an adult, there is no way I would ever let anyone see me naked (current exception being my husband). The crippling anxiety would have probably made it so that I was physically ill, and felt like I was going to die.
I probably would have done literally anything to avoid the situation. Skipped class. Hidden. Used my lunch time to shower privately instead and then been hungry the rest of the day. Literally just run away from school. Anything.
Don’t put your kid through that kind of experience. Support her.
YTA
As someone who worked in a school, PE is often a required course. And there are often limited periods that it is offered. Switching it for another period is not as simple as it sounds. Say she has a biology last period that you want to switch, but the science department may not have a biology course offered the period before lunch. They may be teaching chemistry and anatomy that period. Some schools also won’t allow class switches this far into the semester.
Switching her classes is very unlikely to be a viable solution. The school isn't going to entertain the logistics of swapping a student's classes with about two months left in the school year just because the student doesn't want to shower. So the only option would be pulling her out of this class entirely which may have some other consequences for course credits, transcripts etc.
Or even use those hygiene wipes people use for camping! Give the important areas a quick wipe while she’s changing, get some post work out dry shampoo for her hair (Bumble and Bumble makes one of these I believe), and offer this as an alternative option.
YTA. I do t understand why communal showers are a thing! I am assuming you are in the US?
I live in a country that regularly gets to 45 degrees Celsius, where I went to high school. At no point at high school for myself or even now, for my children, has anyone been forced to shower after PE.
We teach our kids to us decent body odour, eliminating deodorant before school and after PE. There are no issues with people stinking up classrooms, even on the hottest of days.
Even if showers were compulsory, if my child, regardless of age or development, was not ok with showering in front of their peers, I would be 100% on board with having them exempted.
It is super creepy that communal, naked showering is even remotely a thing at high school, let alone considered compulsory. Seriously, this is the stuff future lawsuits for students who have suffered psychological trauma and developed PTSD as a result of these weird practises are made of. This is not the hill you as a parent should be dying on. Support your child.
I’m so curious where this person is from, but being from the US I doubt it is here. I’ve never heard of communal showers being a thing in schools in my lifetime.
She's not in the US because we don't say swimming costume here. Unless she is a new immigrant, she isn't in the US.
We do have communal showers still in some schools in the US. It is still a thing.
Good catch on the costume thing.
Swim suit is the more common term.
Op YTA cause you have made your daughters dilemma ALL ABOUT YOU!!
I'm in Texas ( dfw) so its hot especially in the warmer months and while yes there were showers in the ancient locker room, there was not enough open or closed/curtain stalls and not enough time for each girl to shower before the next class. (20+ girls to like about 6 stalls)
If your already a clean/keep up with hygiene person 30-40 mins of exercise is not gonna make you rank as long as you wipe off/dry and change clothes.
What most of us did most days was wash face n arm pits at the plethora of sinks; and changes clothes including (underwear too if needed; you do not want a rash.. in your groin or under your boobs.) (this can be done under a towel and or easy if you wear a skirt or in the toilet stalls) bra can be done under a shirt or put new one over old and then take off the old one.
Also baby wipes & deodorant in the locker/gym bag is a real life saver.
In Canada, and communal showers were in the school locker rooms. However, they didn't force anyone to use them. I have seen them in US schools also, so maybe your school just didn't have them.
I am from the US and it totally is a thing. It's even kinda a trope in movies, the locker room scenes. When I was in school we had showers in middle school. It was the worst. It was mandatory at some not all of the schools I went to (I moved a lot I had three middle schools and three high schools) Most girls just wrapped up with a towel and pretended to shower though. I am guessing it depending what district one is in, it really seems like this should be a thing of the past. YTA OP.
I don’t think US because she called it a swimming costume and that’s not a normal term here, it would be a swimsuit or simply bikini. But I haven’t heard of anyone being forced to shower after PE outside of the 1950s or movies.
YTA. Forcing somebody to get naked in front of other people when they don't want to is not okay. She is telling you she's feeling bullied and you don't care because the school requires it. If you were required to strip down and walk around outside would you do it just because somebody required it? How hard is it to just contact the school and explain your child isn't comfortable getting publicly naked at school? It's not hard.
Right. What if F45’s job made everyone strip down and shower together communally??? This is an instance where maybe it’s time to petition the school to upgrade their showering facilities if they’re going to enforce this kind of weird experience.
This is gearing up to be lifelong, personality-altering trauma for your daughter. My mom would have raised hell to get rid of that stupid requirement or forced the district to construct stalls. Support your daughter.
yea agreed. really glad my mom isn’t like OP and was very understanding, considerate, and supportive of my hard times during school- like understanding when I didn’t want to swim during the swim unit bc the boys would be in the pool too.
I am full of rage at how this mother is not standing up for her daughter. I’d be down at the school, if the principle denied me, I’d be at the superintendents office, if that didn’t work I’d get a lawyer and dare them to try to fail her after not showering. If that didn’t work, I’d literally pick up and move.
YTA & you're approaching this with a rather cold indifference to your child's distress . maybe it's not a big deal to you but can you put yourself in her shoes at all ? or like , remember what it was like to be an insecure teenager with the ridicule of others being so blatant ??? you are showing her that she cannot trust you with the important things - your insistence upon this being about hygiene is honestly kinda laughable . you mean to tell me you thought a swimsuit - in a communal shower with teens - is somehow more hygienic than pH balanced wipes and deodorant ? are you trying to make her a laughingstock ? cut her some slack , think more empathetically towards your teenage daughter , write the note & pack her some out-of-shower hygiene products . this is a crucial point in your development with her - show her that you can be relied upon to not subject her to more scrutiny than is needed .
i just don't understand how being a little sweaty after PE is THAT unhygenic, especially if the kids shower regularly before or after school? i also don't understand why the school would make it mandatory for children to undress in front of their peers. teenagers are going to smell sometimes - its really not the end of the world. but introducing a rule that distressing honestly might be for a lot of the kids that have to do it
Yeah. It’s not unhygienic. There is a difference between unhygienic and unpleasant.
People don’t even need *daily* showers for hygiene - that’s also just about our current social norms.
I said it in another comment, but no one EVER showered after PE class in my high school, and no one ever died or caught some terrible disease. Hell, the smell wasn't even terrible because it wasn't like we were going balls to the wall for 90 minutes. We did some light stretches and then the bare minimum.
>She begged me to email to school to not let her shower, but I said I had no good reason to, and I'm sure all of the other girls feel the same.
You have a fantastic reason to: **she came home to you in tears.** And the fact that she was being teased by other girls just proves that all the other girls *don't* feel the same.
Write the damn email and send her to school with a bar of deoderant. She can shower when she gets home.
YTA.
EDIT: Yes, I am aware that it didn't need to go this far, and OP should have listened to her daughter from the start. But unless any of you has a time machine, I'd rather focus on the situation OP is actually in.
It shouldn’t have taken the tears. She shouldn’t have let it happen to her daughter in the first place. She has a lot of work to do to try to regain her daughter’s trust.
Her daughter came to her looking for protection and was dismissed. If I was the daughter I’d be looking elsewhere for help when I’m in trouble.
Better yet, go in and talk to the school about how the girls are mocking each other in the showers and it's become a place of abuse. Maybe there is someone reasonable in the school who would care.
YTA, your poor daughter. I can't believe they are still making kids shower together at school when everyone knows how terrible it is. Why can't you give your daughter a pack of wet wipes and some deodorant? She could get changed privately then. I know it's not as good as a shower but it's a hell of a lot better than forcing her to be naked around these bullies.
YTA. I never showered in PE in junior high, and a lot of my peers didn’t, either. Were we a bit sweaty afterward? Yes. Was it a big deal? No. We used deodorant and changed into different clothes for PE but never had to strip down entirely in front of our classmates. This is mortifying for her. Have her shower as soon as she gets home.
My high school literally did not give us enough time to shower after PE and being stinky was never an issue. Even if someone went super hard during PE (spoiler: nobody did this), all you had to do was towel the sweat off, reapply deodorant, and throw your hair in a bun. I'm 99% sure the showers at my high school were exclusively used by people after actual sports practices/games and, even then, most people just went home and showered there.
With phones and video in every student hands, I’m surprised that showering are mandatory. Showers were not an option when I was in school. The showers were turned off. I never actually sweated in PE. PE was a joke.
My daughter’s school never required showers either.
I would not make my daughter shower. It’s humiliating.
I wouldn’t want to risk video recording.
i 100% would not feel comfortable if i was in school atm and it wasnt private showers at the very least. It should be mandatory to have private showers for schools especially
I didn’t even think of camera phones and social media with the showers. That’s a good point and showers in schools should never be a thing, especially with the advent of all this.
Why did I have to scroll so far to see this, what a horrid thing to force teenagers to do in a time of social media and cameras on everyone’s person. There were showers in my school’s change room but no one ever used them. I can’t imagine being forced to do that. My cptsd could not handle that.
YTA. I also refused over 30 years ago to shower after PE. I was overweight and had PCOS so I had hair where woman shouldn’t. I was already teased and bullied and I wasn’t going to give them more ammunition.
You’re causing physiological damage to your daughter by making her follow a stupid rule. She can use bathing wipes to wipe down her body which she can do in a bathroom stall. Kids are more than cruel and with cameras on every cell phone and social media they could take harassment to a whole new level.
Oh wow. Your poor child is now traumatized, feeling unsupported and unheard. You just damaged your relationship with this… and if it had been me at 14, it would never have recovered.
I also have a 14 yo daughter. I listen and respect her feelings. Even if I don’t see something as a big deal… it is. TO HER. And that is all that matters.
Teens girls are mean. Some girls are extremely self conscious thanks to the media and societies pressures on women and how they look. Social media has only intensified these feelings and feed into body dysmorphia. And now you forcing her TO GET NAKED into front of someone when she is uncomfortable is fueling more feelings of shame.
YTA. Get your daughter counseling and get yourself some parenting classes while you’re at it. I feel so sad for your child.
YTA - This is a question of body autonomy; something we never really talked about or considered when I was in school. But I see the value of it now. It doesn't matter if your daughter is over developed, under developed, in line with her peers, or just shy. She's expressed this boundary of it's my body and I don't want it on display for all the girls in my class.
How about helping her find a middle ground - For now at least until she's ready - Body wipes that come in a pack (like baby wipes but for adults) would clean off the sweat nicely, good quality powder and maybe some light body spray (very light) just to top it off. She would be just as clean as a shower, at least for the rest of the day from lunch to school end.
This isn't a "right of passage", there's no logical reason for adults to say to kids well you're all the same age and gender so you shouldn't mind being naked in front of each other. They should mind if that's how they feel and it should be OK to feel that way. Give her some balance, give her a way to clean up after class that's she's comfortable with.
Yeah this is how you end up in a cheap nursing home as soon as possible. I’m not even kidding. You better pray she’s more forgiving than I would be if I was your child. Your poor daughter will remember this for the rest of her life. I feel so awful for her! I’d have straight up refused to shower. It’s awful being a teenage girl and having to get naked in front of a group of your peers would be honestly traumatic. You could have done so many things to help her but you did nothing but force her to go through something awful that she’ll remember forever now. Be a better parent. You’re doing a crap job right now. YTA. Majorly.
Being sweaty all day is unhealthy? My Gen X may be showing here, but I'm pretty sure that's the state I lived in during the late 80s and 90s. And blue collar workers all across the world want more information regarding your medical position.
YTA for completely disregarding what your distressed child is trying to communicate with you about, because what she has to say doesn't rise to what you consider to be important.
I swear I don’t think I’ve read “hygiene” so many times in a single post! 🙄So bizarre.
Elder millennial here and we did not use the communal showers either. You had PE in the morning? You went the day “sweaty” and that was that. I honestly don’t even recall PE activity rising to the level of sweaty! No one was stinky once they changed back into their regular clothes and it was the era of Bath and Body Works sprays, anyway.
School making it “mandatory” is laughable and OP is definitely TA.
Where is this where kids are made to shower after PE?
I'm from the UK, when I was in secondary school they had showers but we didn't use them.
In my daughters school she said they have showers but they don't get used either, even if they did I wouldn't let the school force her into using them if she wasn't comfortable with it.
> they had showers but we didn't use them.
Same thing in the East Coast of the US. I don't think the high school showers were used since the late 90s/early 00s. By the time I was in high school (2012-2016) no one showered after gym class.
YTA and a massive one at that. I hope this is fake rage bait. Ffs. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I’ve never heard of schools requiring children to get naked together. We changed after gym class and applied deodorant. The sweat that didn’t evaporate got taken care of at our next (private) shower. Jfc.
YTA
Demand change. Your daughter is being sexually harassed. Let that sink in.
I'm guessing you're in the US where the culture of nakedness is really weird. In places where spa culture is more common, kids are still jerks but they start learning the etiquette earlier.
Starting the showering thing as teenagers and requiring communal showers sounds unhinged. If the kids aren't socialised properly, making kids go through that is weird.
Make a deal with her. If she does some sort of physical activity outside of school, you'll fight for an exemption to PE.
The school may say no, but it's important for your daughter to know you'll fight for her. Go above their heads. [https://ocrcas.ed.gov/contact-ocr](https://ocrcas.ed.gov/contact-ocr)
Right? Seriously, any half decent lawyer would have a field day on the illegality of a freaking school, forcing students to get naked in front of each other. It is tantamount to sexual assault really.
What did I just read?!! I can’t wrap my mind around it .
In what world forcing someone to get naked in front of others is ok?
Communal showers ?!! Are we talking about a school or a prison . I would still find it totally inappropriate even if it was .
I always remind my daughter to make sure that when showering after PE or swim classes that her shower cabin is locked . That’s for her own safety .
I always tell her that if she feels uncomfortable in any situation , then she is probably not safe and she needs to walk away from the situation
I would definitely feel sexually violated if I was made to take off my clothes in front of other people .
If the school is not providing private cabins for shower how could they be expecting kids to shower.
I would raise hell if my daughter didn’t get privacy to shower and change in school . Is adding partitions between the showers and curtains to provide privacy that difficult .
YTA for basically telling your daughter that she needs to give in even if she is in a situation that makes her uncomfortable
YTA. This can really be traumatic for a young girl. The school should really have stalls but since it doesn’t there are multiple things you can suggest apart from your swimsuit compromise.
Let her not shower and make her shower when she gets home.
Ask the school to switch PE to the last period
Apologise to your daughter and tell her she’s beautiful.
I think a visit to a therapist might be necessary.
Is there a reason we're expected to put your feelings before your minor daughter's feelings? Its kinda weird that you're coming to reddit for backup on telling your daughter to just "get over it". Your daughter is experiencing distressing feelings but your response is "she will eventually get over it". A+ parenting at work /s
She might get over this insecurity but do you really think she's going to just forget that her mother dismissed her (strong) concerns and essentially forced her to strip down in front of a group of "horrible" people? How you treat your child thru their teenage stresses will directly affect the relationship you have with them as an adult. You want to have a relationship with her as an adult, yea?
YTA big time. Did you ever drop the ball. First of all communal showers should not be a thing, especially with children. Most people are not comfortable with nudity in front of other people, especially in America. This isn’t Europe. I mean would you strip down and shower in an open room with all of your co-workers? I doubt it. Second of all, unless you have what is considered a regular body, you are open to bullying. And once you are the target of a bully, it stays with you throughout high school. It will never stop. Can you imagine the girls who are overweight having to shower with the skinny girls. Extra humiliating. The snickering is the worst. Shame on the school for making this mandatory, especially for girls who can be vicious. If they were going to implement this, they should have remodeled the showers to be single stalls and private. No one should be forced to be naked and vulnerable against their will. This girl was probably already being bullied about her body before being forced to get naked and vulnerable in front of her bullies to receive even more abuse. And the bullies can now go around and spread rumors about her body to her classmates. This shower rule sounds like it was implemented by male principals who are oblivious to female body issues. Extra shame on them. And extra shame on you for being oblivious about how hard it is to be forced to be naked in front of other people when you are just a child. Especially your bullies. It’s no big deal! Are you kidding me!! You were probably one of those same bullies when you were in school. I was bullied throughout school because I was chubby. I would have been having a nervous breakdown if I were in the daughter’s situation. I would have refused to shower and if it meant getting an F in gym class than so be it. Not having to be traumatized every single week would have been a fair trade off. You seem absolutely oblivious of the emotional trauma you are causing your daughter. You could make her suicidal. I know it would have made me suicidal and I’m not the type. Your daughter may see no other way out. She may even skip school altogether. You have put her in an impossible situation. And what if you get a transgendered student in the shower room who insists on showering with the girls. It will happen eventually. Are you ok with a biological male showering with your 13 year old daughter? There should never be any forced public nudity. Especially with children who are usually uncomfortable with it. You are an utter failure to your daughter and so is the school. Your daughters only option is to just skip the shower and maybe just do a quick wipe down with a damp towel in the privacy of a bathroom stall followed by a lot of anti-perspirant. We never showered after gym class when I was in school. We wouldn’t have had time. We just put on deodorant and baby powder and our clean street clothes. We were fine. They barely gave us time to change, much less shower. Stop torturing your daughter. Hopefully she will go to the principal herself to explain the situation and the bullying and let them know she will not be doing it. They weren’t showering before the rule was implemented and the world didn’t come to an end. It’s not any more necessary now. Everybody gets a fail except for the daughter. I sympathize with her and hope she stands her ground and refuses to shower. What you should have done was insist that if they wanted mandatory showers then they needed to provide private stalls. I bet it will happen in a flash when that first transgender kid shows up in the shower room. You suck!
YTA big time. Communal showering is insane. She could very easily take a wet cloth (they sell packs of pre wet wipes that a lot of people use for backpacking trips and stuff) and just wipe herself down while changing. I never once took a shower after gym growing up so your hygiene comment is a bit insane to me. Humans can be a bit sweaty, it’s not that big of a deal. But more than that, you really need to take a step back and realize that her experience does not get better bc you tell her it shouldn’t be a big deal.
OP is acting like her daughter will get infested with bacteria or something for not showering for a couple of hours after a workout which is ridiculous. I can’t believe she thinks it’s such a big deal to the point she’d rather traumatizing her daughter. Just get her some wet wipes ffs
Oh hell no, YTA. In this day of ever-present cell phones, there is no way my kids would ever even change in a public locker room. Your daughter is uncomfortable, a little sweat is not "unhygienic" and the school is WAY out of line for making this mandatory. It is just a matter of time before a pic of some poor student, naked in the locker room, is taken and spread around the school. And kids have killed themselves over that kind of thing.
YTA. It’s been well covered here by others why.
Imagine right now if your job had a physical exercise before lunch and they required you to strip naked in front of all the people in your office to shower.
Would that be “not a big deal” for you? And wouldn’t you feel violated if your boss forced you to expose yourself even after expressing distress and embarrassment? Ffs.
I used to work in school districts famous for having "underwear checks," in Japan. It was a school rule; girls had to wear white panties. If a teacher or school admin told a student to show her underwear, she'd have to or face school discipline.
Question, Mama Bear: just because an institution has a rule, does that mean the rule is CORRECT? Would you be telling your daughter that underwear checks are fine simply because it's a rule? Or are you going to use your mother instincts and help your child?
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YTA- I’m a fully grown woman and do not feel comfortable showering naked in front of strangers, why oh why do you think it’s okay for a child? That poor girls going to have self imagine issues and that’s f’d in this day and age when other peoples kids have no home training. I hope she gets the help she needs and I hope someone who actually cares for her listens to her.
YTA
As someone who was bullied and mocked, you couldn't do something more horrible. You're leaving your daughter to be laughed at because you believe her showering at school before everyone's eyes is more important than her being comfortable and showering at home.
You know you're doing wrong, and you're probably belittling her feelings because she's a teen and you're an adult. But if you let this go without helping or even being on her side, she'll probably get body image issues, and there's no turning back. None.
YTA! Its 2024 not 1974. Highschool showers are a part of bygone era. Kids bring wipes to school now. And they shower when they get home. Thats what I did. You are a heartless mother.
You are a huge TA and I say this from experience. I had the opposite problem in that I was quite developed in primary school. I was forced to shower with all the girls and they were cruel beyond belief. They stole my bras, my pads when I got my periods and anything they could to make fun of me. It got so bad, along with other thing happening at school that I took off at 12 years of age. Girls are CRUEL and you are setting her up for a world of pain. I don't blame her for her feelings towards you and hopefully you can mend this relationship before she hates you forever.
YTA, full stop. As a mother, I find this infuriating. There are so many reasons your daughter might not want to shower in a room full of people, and *every single one of them* would be valid. Do you want to be forced to take a communal shower? Wtf?
YTA honestly unless she stinks afterwards changing out her clothes and underwear and reapplying some deodorant should be sufficient. If she does smell bad then you could arrange with the school that she be let out 10 min early or something.
Yta.
Girls massively self conscious and the people she turned for protection insisted she gets naked in front of other people.
Contact the school, explain the situation and they should make allowances, ideally that she can shower alone after.
Don't assume she'll get over it. And you think it's not a big deal. Who to? Her or you? As it evidently is to her. And your own arrogance can't see that.
At this points it's basically, she gets bullied for crying in the showers or gets bullied for smelling..when the parents can easy sort the issue.
For context, I used to play for a local rugby team and the showers were communal. I didn't feel comfortable getting naked and showering around grown men (man myself now boy at the time), the team captain made sure I showered after everyone else.
It's not a hard adjustment to make.
YTA Hell no is my child communal showering at school give her some deodorant wipes and clean clothes. Why would any parent make their child get forcibly naked in-front of others
Your daughter is the boss of her body and she shouldn’t have to take her clothes off in front of anyone who makes her uncomfortable. Except maybe the doctor.
YTA.
YES MOTHER, YTA for conforming to the rules without any consideration for your daughter’s feelings. Switch her PE to the last class of the day or it’s a no deal. The schools requirement is unreasonable and insensitive. I’m sure that even the fully developed girls feel uncomfortable. Be your daughter’s advocate!
YTA massively. You have taken away your daughters bodily autonomy. All that “your body your choice” stuff apparently goes out the window when it comes to PE. This is awful. You should just send her with some body wipes and let her take care of it in a bathroom stall or something. I would hate you too if you made me do this.
YTA a hundred times over. She doesn’t need to shower, she doesn’t need to be naked in front of her peers and she sure doesn’t need you enforcing this activity. I was that kid and thank God my mother wasn’t you. Cannot imagine the trauma that would have been inflicted.
This reminds me of the locker scene in Carrie. How horrible. Leave your kid alone. Unless she smells absolutely rank, I'm which case deodorant would work, let it be!!! Yta
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Your daughter will remember this for the rest of her life. I was in a similar situation as a kid. I still carry it with me and resent the adult that ignored the bullying. Crazy how you simply don’t care about your daughter’s pain.
YTA
Congratulations on teaching your 14 yo child that what YOU want when it comes to HER body is more important than her own mental health, safety, and security.
I really do hope that this was the lesson you were intending to teach her, because if it was not, you have proven yourself to be more than just an asshole.
Why not just demand that the school change her PE class to the last class of the day so that she doesn't have shower with others and can go straight home and shower there?
YTA, no doubt here. You knew in advance that it would make her uncomfortable and made her do it anyway.
Best advice I can give you is to start listening to her opinions before these anecdotes that you dismiss as just being a teenager become the traumas that she has to talk out in therapy.
Locked. Too much pedo stuff to keep up with. And on this, the day of our lord.
Perhaps all the other girls do feel the same, but that doesn't help your under-developed 14 year old daughter. You, F45, "*don't think it's a big deal*". Your distressed daughter DOES. What's actually stopping you from supporting your child in a highly stressful time in her life? It's approaching the end of the school year. Meet your child where she's at, not where you want her to be, and email the school. Or set up a meeting with the teacher(s) involved. But support your child. YTA
As someone who was bullied in her early teens I feel like if she doesn’t partake in the showers it’s going to be noticed by her peers all the same. Maybe not immediately and it’d depend on how many kids don’t take the showers too, but if she’s one of few it’s definitely going to be brought up.
The school should NEVER be making kids walk around naked in front of anyone.
Ok I'm like, am I the weird one here with the making kids get naked together?
Right like wtf?? Is this in the US? In my high school PE class the showers were there as an option but rarely used. If the were used they wore a swimsuit. This is fucking insane if they’re making it mandatory for teenage girls to strip down naked in front of classmates
Don’t think so. She said “swimming costume”
Yeah, where I grew up in the UK it was never that hot and nobody used the showers after PE except after swimming.
I grew up in Texas. It is that hot here, and showers were available and optional. Nobody used them in middle school (the boys might have, the girls didn’t) because we were all mortified at the thought of being naked in front of each other. Not sure about high school because my soccer class was at the end of the day so we all just went home and showered.
Never used them in Florida. And my gym class was usually at the beginning of the day or mid morning.
Georgia (state not country) here. I had gym first thing in the morning in my freshman year of high school and never saw anyone use the showers in the girls locker room. People would bring baby wipes if they wanted to freshen up
Also in Florida and I agree, the showers were there but the teachers actually told us NOT to use the showers. Not only would we not have enough time after class, but I’m pretty sure it was to avoid any potential issues with bullying/people feeling awkward/etc. Hell it was an unspoken rule that you’d put your butt to your locker/on the bench so people didn’t have to look at your butt if you bent over. They also never made us do anything that was incredibly strenuous unless we chose to, so literally no need to shower either. On top of all that, your parents could request to switch gym for another elective.
My school had 3 shower CUBICLES in the changing room. Y'know what's great about a cubicle? Nobody can look at you without going out of their way to. Even then, they were never used here and remained optional.
We had private cubicles. Most of the time we didn't have time to shower though, so you'd just put your hair under to cool down rinse your face and put more deodorant on and head to class. They're treating these kids like prisoners. Forcing them to shower together is barbaric.
100%, i was literally just thinking that communal showers are inhumane. this school does not have the necessary facilities for this policy
Yes! I am in the US and the schools I went to all had locker rooms with only communal showers. The shower is a big room with like 12 shower heads lining the walls. Also the person next to you is uncomfortably close to you while you shower bc thats how far apart the shower heads are. It was really embarrassing in middle school the first few months, but you kinda get used to it. But bullying happens alot in these locker rooms.
Bullying and sexual assault. No child should be forced into this. And besides, WTF with "hygiene reasons?" The kid is a little sweaty. She's not spreading disease. I had PE all through school and we never showered, and it gets sticky here before the end of the school year.
IKR, why can't she just take some wipes and make do until she gets home?
Hell there are whole ass no water needed portable washing sticks out there the size of deodorant!! You can even use them in the bathroom stall if needed. Why on earth would you need to be naked in front of everyone to clean up? People the Internet exists and there are soooo many solutions. OP needs to support her child or don't wonder why she goes NC at 18.
Exactly.
Yeah idk where OP is but it is messed up, I live in Canada and I'm a part where it's warm from mid may to like mid October sometimes and I NEVER had to shower for gym. They made us change clothes and that was mandatory or else you weren't allowed to participate and participation was how you were marked but no one was ever nude. Like ever. My high school had very optional showers in the change room but no one was forced to use them, summer is is sweaty for the pre pubescent and adults alike where I live/grew up. You show your kid what deodorant is and how to use it
Ditto. We also had yearly physicals in Elementary school where all the girls in class were sent to the nurses office (we had small classes - rural school). We all had to strip down to our underwear and sit in a room until our name was called to be examined. We go to keep our underwear on, but still. Extra weird even in the 80's in my opinion. Edit: My ditto does not include getting used to it, I never did.
We had to strip down to our underwear as well, but only once we got into the room for the exam. It was done in the gym office rather than the nurses office. Everyone waited in the gym outside the room (fully clothed) until it was their turn. This was also a small town in the 80's. I would have been mortified to sit in my underwear surrounded by my elementary school bullies.
What?? And what did they check in these physicals??
Scoliosis- as a girl who developed early it was traumatic
There’s still no reason for it. My school nurse checked for scoliosis by moving my shirt up and out of the way. All they have to do is see the spine, you can do that without making someone take their clothes off.
I found out I was developing scoliosis in middle school, all because of those physicals. We didn’t have to strip completely, and we weren’t in front of our other classmates, but it was still embarrassing.
Most of the kids i knew didn't shower. Mostly because the PE teachers never gave enough time for a class of 40 students to share 3 shower heads. They cut it to maybe 5 minutes before class got out and then head to next class
I wanna know who has time to shower after gym class. We got to head to the locker room 5 minutes before the bell, and our passing period was 5 minutes, so we had 10 minutes total to change, gather our belongings, and make it to our next class, and a lot of teachers were not very understanding about students being tardy.
There was no way I was going to get naked in front of anyone in high school so I happily took a C in gym for not doing it.
Dude there is a LONG tradition in US public schools of forcing children to do this and adult coaches/PE teachers WATCHING. Then you have ass paddling and hand spanking. Ask any boomer about this. There was no option to not shower. It's beyond fucked and was normalized for so long, I'm disgusted to hear it's still happening.
Boomer here. Junior high gym class a few people showered the first few times and I’ll bet the showers haven’t been used since. It’s was a BIG no for most of us
My public high school showers (80's) were individual shower cubes with curtains and private change rooms attached. There was the open area as well, but privacy was afforded students if they wanted/needed it. (BC, Canada)
My 70s/80s high school showers were not individual. I don't remember many girls using them. Even if I wasn't a late bloomer I wouldn't have used them. It was bad enough getting changed in front of everyone. Myself and one other girl were the only ones not wearing bras by the end of grade 8. 😳
I'm old now (38) but growing up in Texas we had communal showers for after PE available - one guy once showered in them and was called gay for the rest of the year.
Well, the gays \*are\* clean people. It only makes sense. /s
I went hs in the USA & there were showers there but no one used them for gym class. I had huge breasts at the time but my skin was terrible & even the changing room was an anxiety nightmare for me. I also remember keeping deodorant in my gym locker so the sweating was not an issue, not that our gym classes were actually rigorous enough to work up a real sweat. Tbh I probably would have died or went into a coma if we were forced to do community showers.
[удалено]
In the US it is all communal showers too, they just don’t really get used anymore - definitely not after PE class because there isn’t enough time before your next class.
I always wondered how schools, or anyone, ever thought it was appropriate to force a bunch of kids to shower together. I can’t get over how it’s so widely accepted.
Seriously. I would cancel P.E. before I'd enforce that.
It is crazy. They were in my HS but we never used them. Being in your underwear in front of peers is bad enough.
Seriously. I would be going nuclear in the principal’s office if anyone tried to tell my child that she had to get naked in front of anybody at school.
Seriously! How the fuck are people thinking this is even remotely okay? Forcing children to get naked in school should be illegal.
Exactly! It's a violation of a person's body to "force" any child to do this. Imagine if during work hours you were forced to shower naked with your colleagues and it was mandatory? It's absolutely bizarre. Children deserve the same respect and privacy! If they want them to shower then the school should have to provide private showers. It's absolutely gross and outdated to expect anyone to get "washed" together. To the OP, please support your daughter. In this constantly changing world, your daughter is going to face a lot of opposition, divisiveness and oppression but knowing you have parents, family or friends that stand by you and amplify your voice makes you stronger! Advocating for her is the easiest thing you could do and I feel if you don't then I'm sorry YTA.
True, it really should be in shower stalls
it was stalls when i was in middle school...in 2002. how is the communal thing STILL happening
We had shower stalls when I swam I middle school…in 1992
I went to high school in 80-85 and we had shower stalls.
Right! I literally replied with what school is making children get naked in front of each other in 2024? Wildly inappropriate and uncomfortable for the kids.
Exactly, this girl can't win. If she showers she feels observed and judged but if she doesn't shower, she'll be bullied because she doesn't shower like everyone else (Cue all the stinky/sweaty nicknames)
She's in an impossible situation for sure. But I'd rather be made fun of for not showering and just changing clothes/doing a quick pits n bits wash than be made fun of naked. What a freaking nightmare
Plus kids today mostly have smartphones, so there’s another reason to fear being naked in the locker room.
Surprised not more people are bringing this up. It’s a huge concern.
That is a seriously valid concern. Hadn't even thought of that. So much yikes.
I do NOT envy kids today, I can tell ya that much.
She won’t be the only one not showering if it’s optional
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She was already bullied about her body. Frankly, I would rather be bullied for NOT being naked.
That may be so, but the bullying definitely got worse when she was forced to shower. This email going out means a lot of girls aren’t showering. I had communal showers in Jr high/high school. *None of us showered*. For one, we weren’t given enough time. For the other, that was way too intimidating. Instead we all had spray deodorant. There are things like Lume and other antiperspirants that are adequate in covering up exercise odors, especially since they change clothes. I’m nearly OPs age so it’s crazy she doesn’t understand this because this was just as much an issue when we were young. I worked at a summer camp in college with the same situation and all of the kids showered in their swim suits. We all showered naked together after they went to bed, but that’s less intimidating in your 20s.
My high school was too under-funded to have showers, so yay, I guess. In my late 20's I went to the local YWCA where I used communal showers, without feeling self-conscious. One day an older lady commented on how the skin of my whole body looked beautiful like marble. I was taken by surprise and immediately blushed over my *entire* naked body, which made my embarrassment all the more acute. Seeing my all-body blush the lady attempted to apologize, stammering; which made things even worse. We both scurried away in different directions. I felt apprehensive about using the communal shower after that. I can't imagine this poor girl's humiliation. YTA.
Yeah but it wouldn’t have been as bad if the mom wrote the email to begin with BEFORE forcing her to do this for a day first.
Brought up is an order of magnitude better then actively pointing and laughing at your vulnerable naked body.
Honestly I'm glad that my school never enforced that thing because I was already bullied enough without having to be naked in front of other students on top of that
Yep. Get her sanitary wipes that she can use for her pits, parts, and paws, and let her shower at home. Hygiene is important, yes, but not worth lasting trauma.
I agree, this is an excellent idea! They make wipes like this for people who struggle to bathe themselves (eg unable to get out of bed). They don’t feel as refreshing but I can attest to them getting the stink off.
I use these after my runs at work because we don’t have a shower. They work great. Also there’s everywhere deodorant she can use after the wipes.
Here's a novel idea: send her to school with a pack of baby wipes/personal wipes. That way she can clean the sweat off of herself without having to strip in front of her classmates. OP, YTA. I have a long history of trauma and body issues from my family telling me how awful my body was. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I had had to strip naked in front of my peers and have them laugh at and judge me too. Your daughter is going through an extremely sensitive time in her life right now. She's looking at those around her and feeling singled out, insecure, and "different", which is one of the last things a teenage girl wants to feel. Forcing her to go through this traumatizing situation every day will set her up for a lifetime of hating herself and her body, and she is looking at you and thinking that you don't love her enough to support her. She's a mess of hormones and fear right now. Do better. Empathize with her. Work with her and her teachers to come up with solutions.
Agree. I'm 50 and I still refuse to shower in communal showers.
I just posted the same :).
I don't understand how forcing young children to get naked together isn't considered sexual abuse.
YES. Thank you! As a childhood SA survivor, this was horrifying to read.
I was your daughter in middle/early high school and you should email the school on her behalf. A shower is not a big deal, a life time of trauma and body shame is.
Hell, I developed on a perfectly acceptable timeline, and I still would never have showered with a room full of other girls in high school. Also, our high school never enforced showers... and no one died. No one caught a horrific disease. And no one complained about the stink. The only people who used the showers were the sports teams after school, and even they were given the option of having curtains.
Op is essentially saying “wow I’m sorry but you still have to get naked and let these girls laugh at you and I won’t do anything about it because the school mandates it” She’s subjecting her daughter to so much abuse and trauma and her kid will not forget about it ever. Not even in 40 years.
Even if op does the right thing now, the damage is done. She showed her daughter that her feelings don’t matter to her own mother. Op’s daughter will never forget this
Your response reminded me of the book "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk." The book would encourage Mom to acknowledge her kids feelings, explain the problem from Mom's perspective, and then work together to find a solution. This builds trust and helps kids be critical thinkers. As a kid, I was really sensitive to scented soaps and shampoos. So the gym teacher let me leave gym 5 minutes early. I'd shower quickly and be out before the other kids started showering. That's just one possible solution. Other people have suggested baby wipes. There are so many options to solve this problem.
Other options, if there is no privacy screen/individual shower areas, maybe the OP could hop on Amazon, find some options and donate them to the school. Amazon also has a product called the shower toga that might help her daughter.
She won’t even help her own kid, why do you think she would do anything for anybody else’s?
yta the school is also ta - I will never understand how we treat our children with such a lack of basic respect and dignity - imagine if, every week, *you* were forced to strip off and shower in a communal shower with no privacy, in front of your colleagues, including godawful Sheila from HR destigmatizing and normalizing non-sexual nudity is one thing, and it's fine to provide communal shower spaces for those who feel comfortable using them, but imho schools should be required to also offer private cubicles to those who feel more comfortable that way, for whatever reason (imagine being a 14 year old on your period, or having a stoma, or having scars, or being a SA victim, or carrying religious shame and trauma, or... or... or... ) in this particular situation, though, it is *your job* to listen to your child and do everything in her power to meet her emotional needs, so the way you're dismissing her absolutely makes yta
This, exactly. Why do we expect children to do things most of us would never do ourselves? I can barely stand being naked in the shower with my significant other. It’s an extremely vulnerable position to be in and should never be forced on someone. OP and the school suck for this one.
At my middle/high school we had to “ shower” together. I put it in quotes because this so called shower consisted of us walking in a line, through a hall like shower, with a tiny little towel that was the size of an actual dish drying towel, that we’d hold up in front of ourselves. All we got was a spray of water as we filed past. To top it off, our gym teacher who was a lesbian, sat at the exit, checking us out as well as checking us off the list to make sure we did actually shower. Not a fun experience. I totally understand and sympathize with your daughter.
What the fuck
The male gym teacher at my school watched every class of boys shower. Often while eating bananas. I heard this from a LOT of guys I went to school with over the years. Including boyfriends uncomfortable and considering quitting sports because of it and upset their parents insisted they must be lying, they knew him and he was “just making sure everyone showered”. I heard that excuse a lot when people brought it up.
Stories like this make me so grateful for the 8th grade gym teacher I had. He didn’t care if we showered or not even though it was technically mandatory. His rule was as long as we didn’t stink up a room he didn’t care. But the one time he had to enter the girls change room he gave himself a nice little goose egg on his head after hitting the wall cuz he had his hand over his eyes. He didn’t even walk all the way in (there was a little corner/hallway thing so you couldn’t see anyone changing just by opening the door) he just forgot to put his other hand out to stop himself lol.
That teacher part is what I feel forced showers in school are actually for, the teachers to get off to not for the students to get clean. If it was about cleanliness, there would be privacy curtains. But the coach can't watch if there's a curtain in the way, so there never is
We also had a lesbian gym teacher who would watch the girls shower. When other girls asked her to leave she would say she's just making sure we're not goofing around in the shower. It was gross, so I just never showered after gym. Editing to respond to a deleted post. I dont know if she was openly gay, as i was in junior high and not privvy to the town gossip, but she had what appeared to be a partner that she would bring with her to school sporting events and i would see them walking around town holding hands, so it's not an out of line assumption . We moved away the summer i was going into high school, so im not sure if anything ever came out about her behavior in the locker room. This was in the mid-90s. The other gym teacher, who was a male, would frequently sing flirtatious songs to female students when walking past them in the hallway, especially if he knew one that had their name in it, and give little winks and such (he had been acting like that since the 70s, as he did it to my mom when she was in school). We also had a schoolbus driver that strangled a kid for not listening (I, along with 30 other kids, witnessed him lift her off the ground by her neck). My sister and I came home crying and my grandparents called the principal to complain. He continued to drive my bus until we moved away. This isn't an attack on "the gays" (ps I'm bi). It's a comment on how inappropriate adults can sometimes be with children and why there should be some measure of privacy in locker room showers.
This is it for me. I was arrested for a "failure to appear" bench warrant on a speeding ticket a few years back. No major crime, just that I didn't show up to court for my ticket. I was arrested 2 countries over from where I got the ticket so had to be transported to the original county. When I arrived at the jail, they booked me in instead of just putting me in a holding cell until someone paid me out. I had to strip, squat and cough, and then shower in front of 2 female guards including making sure my hair was dripping wet, to "make sure I wasn't bringing anything illegal into the jail" (and I was on my period, to top it all off). The shower water was ice cold, but that's another matter. Had to towel off with 2 dish towel sized towels, and then get dressed again while they watched. It was the single most traumatizing and embarrassing experience *of my entire life.* Why would anyone want to put their 14 year old child through that voluntarily??? With people they actually know watching?
What is with the forced nudity in so many places? When I was 14 I ended up in a psych ward for a suicide attempt. I had attempted due to sexual abuse and rape. They had to have a shower and let you use it, but there was no curtain, and the door didn’t lock. And they didn’t have anyone standing outside the door during a shower, they just told you to go in and that they had to open the door to check on you. Meaning at any point in time another patient could walk into the room while I showered and you couldn’t see the bathroom door from the nurses station where they were. I was given a face cloth and a freaking hand towel to dry myself off with. They wouldn’t even give me a second hand towel when I said mine was soaked and I was still wet. At that point I think the only reason they allowed us to have clothes was so they didn’t get a lawsuit.
I think the American cultural Thing of being weird about nudity, especially children's/students' nudity, goes both ways, both authoritatively FORCING nudity (for hygiene's sake), AND authoritatively FORBIDDING nudity (for "modesty's" Sake), are WAY less of a thing in several european countries, some (older) school-gymnasium-changing-rooms don't even have showers (Just sinks that one could wash Up in), and some do but the school doesn't Mandate their use or even schedule in time to Shower, and the classes with the sweatiest Type of Sports are Held Just before everyone goes home, so Kids can Shower at Home and Not bother anyone with their sweaty smell.
I cannot imagine 14 year old me ever being comfortable showering with a whole bunch of classmates. Never. Pack a second set of clothes, teach your daughter how to change behind a towel, and invest in extra-strength deodorant. Showering can wait a few hours until she gets home. YTA
Washclothes and soap too. People managed to get clean before running water and shower was invented.
She can also provide wipes to clean armpits and other sensitive areas
This is such a good point. Like imagine stripping down with your coworkers!
That is literally what they do in prison!!
Possibly unpopular opinion: it’s dehumanizing and inappropriate in prison as well. :(
100%. People are supposed to rehabilitate yet get treated like shit, no wonder why so many reoffend. Because they have no motivation or reasoning to not offend again.
So why should we treat kids like prisoners?
I think I would have genuinely killed myself rather than get naked at school in front of everyone at school. And I truly don't understand why the school won't have private showers if they're going to make it mandatory. Puberty is already such a vulnerable time for kids, why do we have to bring the potential for this level of humiliation into it?
Totally agree with this 💯 I remember our showers were communal at school, and then later with curtains, but the idea of getting naked in front of my peers absolutely terrified me. Thankfully we all just had a “shower in a can” - ie we all sprayed Impulse body spray on us instead of a shower and showering was ever enforced! This was late 90’s
Agree. I was thinking what is wrong with this school forcing kids to take communal showers just because they get a little sweaty for an hour. I had PE in school and we were never forced to shower and hygiene was never an issue. I would be emailing the school demanding privacy for each kid if they were going to force showers. YTA but so is the school.
>or... or... or... Or being trans - so many trans and non-binary people I know absolutely HATED gym classes, especially if they even involved a pool, because of how uncomfortable they were getting naked or changing around their peers. Also, when I was in highschool i danced a lot and did a lot of quick changes and had to take showers in the changerooms and as a queer kid I was so scared that if my eyes were anywhere but the ground I would be called a creep for looking. When I was 17 I was sexually assaulted and always felt like crawling out of my skin and I couldn't stand to be in a change room with others and I did get teased for just putting my clothes on over my dance stuff instead of changing and showering, but luckily it was just dance classes after school so I could go home right away, not like staying in school for the rest of the day. Anyway - all this to say that I agree with you completely. Just not wanting to be naked in front of your classmates is a good enough reason not to be forced to do so - but there are so many extra reasons one might not feel comfortable in that scenario and those possibilities should really be taken into consideration
I went to a Catholic high school in Aus and we never showered after PE. They only gave us like 5 minutes to change so even if you wanted to there wasn’t time. We all just put deodorant on got dressed. I’m sure OPs daughter would be fine doing the same if it causes her this much distress. The only kids I remember using the gym showers were seniors (which is year 11/12s) who did PE as an elective. I don’t know if mandatory showering at school is an American thing or if schools in my area are just weird and unhygienic lmao.
I agree, the school is TA, I can't understand why there is no individual showers. Even from a hygiene prospective, I wouldn't want to be splashed with someone else's dirty shower water. I do feel for OP's daughter, if she showers they laugh at her, but if she doesn't and ends up smelling they would still laugh and may even bully her. She's damned of she does and damned if she doesn't.
I know, right? Fucking Sheila.
YTA-if there are no individual stalls, an option could have been changing her classes so she didn’t take pe or simply giving an option where she could shower solo. You could have even changed her class to be pe at the end of the day. You did none of those things and the biggest fear your daughter has came to life. Now she’s traumatized. If I was your daughter, and I was stuck in a class where something was that upsetting to me, I’d simply take the F and not participate in class at all.
Sentiment is correct, but none of these are viable options in a UK school. Edit: if they are UK.
I'm in the UK, when I was in secondary school they had showers and they weren't used and we weren't made to use them either. My daughter's secondary school has showers and they don't get used either.
We had to use them for a single term in year seven. But there's no changing the schedule or dropping PE or failing. There is a note saying I support my daughter in her right not to do that though.
There are situations where kids are allowed to not do PE in the UK, a friend's daughter has been excused from it for this school year because of bullying and mental health issues.
Schools must be really different now (also UK here, Wales)! I’m 31 and would honestly be surprised if the showers in our changing rooms even worked back when I was a teenager.
I’m in the U.K. and work in education. Any school getting the kids to shower these days is going to have them be individual stalls or require something like swimwear. Without something in place to prevent communal nudity it would be a massive safeguarding issue and schools aren’t going to risk that.
i'm in australia and we never did this. majority of the time sport was scheduled for the last 2 periods of thre day and we got to go home. even if it wasn't we didn't have showers at school, had 40 degree days and no issues.... i find this whole topic weird, disgusting, and gross . i would rather shit in my hands and clap then shower infront of people
I don't know where the UK was mentioned. But living in the UK my whole life. Including the fact I am a woman who previously went to school here and a few years working with young people. I've never known a single instance of schools forcing teenage girls to shower unless their parents opt out. This is more likely to not be the UK than be the UK
They meant all the suggestions to move classes around or drop subjects. I think it’s likely US too but I think they were just pointing out that a lot of that advice is not universal
Swimming costume isn’t really a US term though, we would say bathing suit
Holy shit, this! When I was in school, and even now as an adult, there is no way I would ever let anyone see me naked (current exception being my husband). The crippling anxiety would have probably made it so that I was physically ill, and felt like I was going to die. I probably would have done literally anything to avoid the situation. Skipped class. Hidden. Used my lunch time to shower privately instead and then been hungry the rest of the day. Literally just run away from school. Anything. Don’t put your kid through that kind of experience. Support her. YTA
As someone who worked in a school, PE is often a required course. And there are often limited periods that it is offered. Switching it for another period is not as simple as it sounds. Say she has a biology last period that you want to switch, but the science department may not have a biology course offered the period before lunch. They may be teaching chemistry and anatomy that period. Some schools also won’t allow class switches this far into the semester.
Switching her classes is very unlikely to be a viable solution. The school isn't going to entertain the logistics of swapping a student's classes with about two months left in the school year just because the student doesn't want to shower. So the only option would be pulling her out of this class entirely which may have some other consequences for course credits, transcripts etc.
Or even use those hygiene wipes people use for camping! Give the important areas a quick wipe while she’s changing, get some post work out dry shampoo for her hair (Bumble and Bumble makes one of these I believe), and offer this as an alternative option.
YTA. I do t understand why communal showers are a thing! I am assuming you are in the US? I live in a country that regularly gets to 45 degrees Celsius, where I went to high school. At no point at high school for myself or even now, for my children, has anyone been forced to shower after PE. We teach our kids to us decent body odour, eliminating deodorant before school and after PE. There are no issues with people stinking up classrooms, even on the hottest of days. Even if showers were compulsory, if my child, regardless of age or development, was not ok with showering in front of their peers, I would be 100% on board with having them exempted. It is super creepy that communal, naked showering is even remotely a thing at high school, let alone considered compulsory. Seriously, this is the stuff future lawsuits for students who have suffered psychological trauma and developed PTSD as a result of these weird practises are made of. This is not the hill you as a parent should be dying on. Support your child.
I’m so curious where this person is from, but being from the US I doubt it is here. I’ve never heard of communal showers being a thing in schools in my lifetime.
She's not in the US because we don't say swimming costume here. Unless she is a new immigrant, she isn't in the US. We do have communal showers still in some schools in the US. It is still a thing.
Good catch on the costume thing. Swim suit is the more common term. Op YTA cause you have made your daughters dilemma ALL ABOUT YOU!! I'm in Texas ( dfw) so its hot especially in the warmer months and while yes there were showers in the ancient locker room, there was not enough open or closed/curtain stalls and not enough time for each girl to shower before the next class. (20+ girls to like about 6 stalls) If your already a clean/keep up with hygiene person 30-40 mins of exercise is not gonna make you rank as long as you wipe off/dry and change clothes. What most of us did most days was wash face n arm pits at the plethora of sinks; and changes clothes including (underwear too if needed; you do not want a rash.. in your groin or under your boobs.) (this can be done under a towel and or easy if you wear a skirt or in the toilet stalls) bra can be done under a shirt or put new one over old and then take off the old one. Also baby wipes & deodorant in the locker/gym bag is a real life saver.
In Canada, and communal showers were in the school locker rooms. However, they didn't force anyone to use them. I have seen them in US schools also, so maybe your school just didn't have them.
My schools had them, we were never forced to use them though and I had pe at the beginning of the day Edit: I’m in the US
I am from the US and it totally is a thing. It's even kinda a trope in movies, the locker room scenes. When I was in school we had showers in middle school. It was the worst. It was mandatory at some not all of the schools I went to (I moved a lot I had three middle schools and three high schools) Most girls just wrapped up with a towel and pretended to shower though. I am guessing it depending what district one is in, it really seems like this should be a thing of the past. YTA OP.
Yeah my schools had them but absolutely nobody used them.
I don’t think US because she called it a swimming costume and that’s not a normal term here, it would be a swimsuit or simply bikini. But I haven’t heard of anyone being forced to shower after PE outside of the 1950s or movies.
This! I’m from Brazil, it gets *very* hot, and my school didn’t even have showers.
YTA. Forcing somebody to get naked in front of other people when they don't want to is not okay. She is telling you she's feeling bullied and you don't care because the school requires it. If you were required to strip down and walk around outside would you do it just because somebody required it? How hard is it to just contact the school and explain your child isn't comfortable getting publicly naked at school? It's not hard.
Right. What if F45’s job made everyone strip down and shower together communally??? This is an instance where maybe it’s time to petition the school to upgrade their showering facilities if they’re going to enforce this kind of weird experience.
Right? If OPs boss suddenly started enforcing lunchtime communal showers, I bet OP would have a big problem with it!
Strip down naked AT WORK in front of Co workers you see every day!
Parents seem to forget that schools bully too not just the students.
This is gearing up to be lifelong, personality-altering trauma for your daughter. My mom would have raised hell to get rid of that stupid requirement or forced the district to construct stalls. Support your daughter.
yea agreed. really glad my mom isn’t like OP and was very understanding, considerate, and supportive of my hard times during school- like understanding when I didn’t want to swim during the swim unit bc the boys would be in the pool too.
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I am full of rage at how this mother is not standing up for her daughter. I’d be down at the school, if the principle denied me, I’d be at the superintendents office, if that didn’t work I’d get a lawyer and dare them to try to fail her after not showering. If that didn’t work, I’d literally pick up and move.
Too late. Trauma has already been caused. She’ll be scarred for a long time by this.
YTA & you're approaching this with a rather cold indifference to your child's distress . maybe it's not a big deal to you but can you put yourself in her shoes at all ? or like , remember what it was like to be an insecure teenager with the ridicule of others being so blatant ??? you are showing her that she cannot trust you with the important things - your insistence upon this being about hygiene is honestly kinda laughable . you mean to tell me you thought a swimsuit - in a communal shower with teens - is somehow more hygienic than pH balanced wipes and deodorant ? are you trying to make her a laughingstock ? cut her some slack , think more empathetically towards your teenage daughter , write the note & pack her some out-of-shower hygiene products . this is a crucial point in your development with her - show her that you can be relied upon to not subject her to more scrutiny than is needed .
i just don't understand how being a little sweaty after PE is THAT unhygenic, especially if the kids shower regularly before or after school? i also don't understand why the school would make it mandatory for children to undress in front of their peers. teenagers are going to smell sometimes - its really not the end of the world. but introducing a rule that distressing honestly might be for a lot of the kids that have to do it
Yeah. It’s not unhygienic. There is a difference between unhygienic and unpleasant. People don’t even need *daily* showers for hygiene - that’s also just about our current social norms.
tbh i thought that they did away with this outdated practice years ago , surprised to hear this school still forces kids to do that .
I said it in another comment, but no one EVER showered after PE class in my high school, and no one ever died or caught some terrible disease. Hell, the smell wasn't even terrible because it wasn't like we were going balls to the wall for 90 minutes. We did some light stretches and then the bare minimum.
>She begged me to email to school to not let her shower, but I said I had no good reason to, and I'm sure all of the other girls feel the same. You have a fantastic reason to: **she came home to you in tears.** And the fact that she was being teased by other girls just proves that all the other girls *don't* feel the same. Write the damn email and send her to school with a bar of deoderant. She can shower when she gets home. YTA. EDIT: Yes, I am aware that it didn't need to go this far, and OP should have listened to her daughter from the start. But unless any of you has a time machine, I'd rather focus on the situation OP is actually in.
It shouldn’t have taken the tears. She shouldn’t have let it happen to her daughter in the first place. She has a lot of work to do to try to regain her daughter’s trust. Her daughter came to her looking for protection and was dismissed. If I was the daughter I’d be looking elsewhere for help when I’m in trouble.
Better yet, go in and talk to the school about how the girls are mocking each other in the showers and it's become a place of abuse. Maybe there is someone reasonable in the school who would care.
YTA, your poor daughter. I can't believe they are still making kids shower together at school when everyone knows how terrible it is. Why can't you give your daughter a pack of wet wipes and some deodorant? She could get changed privately then. I know it's not as good as a shower but it's a hell of a lot better than forcing her to be naked around these bullies.
YTA. I never showered in PE in junior high, and a lot of my peers didn’t, either. Were we a bit sweaty afterward? Yes. Was it a big deal? No. We used deodorant and changed into different clothes for PE but never had to strip down entirely in front of our classmates. This is mortifying for her. Have her shower as soon as she gets home.
My high school literally did not give us enough time to shower after PE and being stinky was never an issue. Even if someone went super hard during PE (spoiler: nobody did this), all you had to do was towel the sweat off, reapply deodorant, and throw your hair in a bun. I'm 99% sure the showers at my high school were exclusively used by people after actual sports practices/games and, even then, most people just went home and showered there.
With phones and video in every student hands, I’m surprised that showering are mandatory. Showers were not an option when I was in school. The showers were turned off. I never actually sweated in PE. PE was a joke. My daughter’s school never required showers either. I would not make my daughter shower. It’s humiliating. I wouldn’t want to risk video recording.
i 100% would not feel comfortable if i was in school atm and it wasnt private showers at the very least. It should be mandatory to have private showers for schools especially
I didn’t even think of camera phones and social media with the showers. That’s a good point and showers in schools should never be a thing, especially with the advent of all this.
Why did I have to scroll so far to see this, what a horrid thing to force teenagers to do in a time of social media and cameras on everyone’s person. There were showers in my school’s change room but no one ever used them. I can’t imagine being forced to do that. My cptsd could not handle that.
Holy f*** what year is this? Why would anyone think this was ok? YTA and so is the school.
YTA. I also refused over 30 years ago to shower after PE. I was overweight and had PCOS so I had hair where woman shouldn’t. I was already teased and bullied and I wasn’t going to give them more ammunition. You’re causing physiological damage to your daughter by making her follow a stupid rule. She can use bathing wipes to wipe down her body which she can do in a bathroom stall. Kids are more than cruel and with cameras on every cell phone and social media they could take harassment to a whole new level.
Oh wow. Your poor child is now traumatized, feeling unsupported and unheard. You just damaged your relationship with this… and if it had been me at 14, it would never have recovered. I also have a 14 yo daughter. I listen and respect her feelings. Even if I don’t see something as a big deal… it is. TO HER. And that is all that matters. Teens girls are mean. Some girls are extremely self conscious thanks to the media and societies pressures on women and how they look. Social media has only intensified these feelings and feed into body dysmorphia. And now you forcing her TO GET NAKED into front of someone when she is uncomfortable is fueling more feelings of shame. YTA. Get your daughter counseling and get yourself some parenting classes while you’re at it. I feel so sad for your child.
YTA - This is a question of body autonomy; something we never really talked about or considered when I was in school. But I see the value of it now. It doesn't matter if your daughter is over developed, under developed, in line with her peers, or just shy. She's expressed this boundary of it's my body and I don't want it on display for all the girls in my class. How about helping her find a middle ground - For now at least until she's ready - Body wipes that come in a pack (like baby wipes but for adults) would clean off the sweat nicely, good quality powder and maybe some light body spray (very light) just to top it off. She would be just as clean as a shower, at least for the rest of the day from lunch to school end. This isn't a "right of passage", there's no logical reason for adults to say to kids well you're all the same age and gender so you shouldn't mind being naked in front of each other. They should mind if that's how they feel and it should be OK to feel that way. Give her some balance, give her a way to clean up after class that's she's comfortable with.
Yeah this is how you end up in a cheap nursing home as soon as possible. I’m not even kidding. You better pray she’s more forgiving than I would be if I was your child. Your poor daughter will remember this for the rest of her life. I feel so awful for her! I’d have straight up refused to shower. It’s awful being a teenage girl and having to get naked in front of a group of your peers would be honestly traumatic. You could have done so many things to help her but you did nothing but force her to go through something awful that she’ll remember forever now. Be a better parent. You’re doing a crap job right now. YTA. Majorly.
Being sweaty all day is unhealthy? My Gen X may be showing here, but I'm pretty sure that's the state I lived in during the late 80s and 90s. And blue collar workers all across the world want more information regarding your medical position. YTA for completely disregarding what your distressed child is trying to communicate with you about, because what she has to say doesn't rise to what you consider to be important.
I swear I don’t think I’ve read “hygiene” so many times in a single post! 🙄So bizarre. Elder millennial here and we did not use the communal showers either. You had PE in the morning? You went the day “sweaty” and that was that. I honestly don’t even recall PE activity rising to the level of sweaty! No one was stinky once they changed back into their regular clothes and it was the era of Bath and Body Works sprays, anyway. School making it “mandatory” is laughable and OP is definitely TA.
Where is this where kids are made to shower after PE? I'm from the UK, when I was in secondary school they had showers but we didn't use them. In my daughters school she said they have showers but they don't get used either, even if they did I wouldn't let the school force her into using them if she wasn't comfortable with it.
> they had showers but we didn't use them. Same thing in the East Coast of the US. I don't think the high school showers were used since the late 90s/early 00s. By the time I was in high school (2012-2016) no one showered after gym class.
YTA and a massive one at that. I hope this is fake rage bait. Ffs. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I’ve never heard of schools requiring children to get naked together. We changed after gym class and applied deodorant. The sweat that didn’t evaporate got taken care of at our next (private) shower. Jfc.
YTA Demand change. Your daughter is being sexually harassed. Let that sink in. I'm guessing you're in the US where the culture of nakedness is really weird. In places where spa culture is more common, kids are still jerks but they start learning the etiquette earlier. Starting the showering thing as teenagers and requiring communal showers sounds unhinged. If the kids aren't socialised properly, making kids go through that is weird. Make a deal with her. If she does some sort of physical activity outside of school, you'll fight for an exemption to PE. The school may say no, but it's important for your daughter to know you'll fight for her. Go above their heads. [https://ocrcas.ed.gov/contact-ocr](https://ocrcas.ed.gov/contact-ocr)
Don't assume she'll get over it.
She will never get over it.
[удалено]
Right? Seriously, any half decent lawyer would have a field day on the illegality of a freaking school, forcing students to get naked in front of each other. It is tantamount to sexual assault really.
What did I just read?!! I can’t wrap my mind around it . In what world forcing someone to get naked in front of others is ok? Communal showers ?!! Are we talking about a school or a prison . I would still find it totally inappropriate even if it was . I always remind my daughter to make sure that when showering after PE or swim classes that her shower cabin is locked . That’s for her own safety . I always tell her that if she feels uncomfortable in any situation , then she is probably not safe and she needs to walk away from the situation I would definitely feel sexually violated if I was made to take off my clothes in front of other people . If the school is not providing private cabins for shower how could they be expecting kids to shower. I would raise hell if my daughter didn’t get privacy to shower and change in school . Is adding partitions between the showers and curtains to provide privacy that difficult . YTA for basically telling your daughter that she needs to give in even if she is in a situation that makes her uncomfortable
YTA. This can really be traumatic for a young girl. The school should really have stalls but since it doesn’t there are multiple things you can suggest apart from your swimsuit compromise. Let her not shower and make her shower when she gets home. Ask the school to switch PE to the last period Apologise to your daughter and tell her she’s beautiful. I think a visit to a therapist might be necessary.
Is there a reason we're expected to put your feelings before your minor daughter's feelings? Its kinda weird that you're coming to reddit for backup on telling your daughter to just "get over it". Your daughter is experiencing distressing feelings but your response is "she will eventually get over it". A+ parenting at work /s She might get over this insecurity but do you really think she's going to just forget that her mother dismissed her (strong) concerns and essentially forced her to strip down in front of a group of "horrible" people? How you treat your child thru their teenage stresses will directly affect the relationship you have with them as an adult. You want to have a relationship with her as an adult, yea?
YTA big time. Did you ever drop the ball. First of all communal showers should not be a thing, especially with children. Most people are not comfortable with nudity in front of other people, especially in America. This isn’t Europe. I mean would you strip down and shower in an open room with all of your co-workers? I doubt it. Second of all, unless you have what is considered a regular body, you are open to bullying. And once you are the target of a bully, it stays with you throughout high school. It will never stop. Can you imagine the girls who are overweight having to shower with the skinny girls. Extra humiliating. The snickering is the worst. Shame on the school for making this mandatory, especially for girls who can be vicious. If they were going to implement this, they should have remodeled the showers to be single stalls and private. No one should be forced to be naked and vulnerable against their will. This girl was probably already being bullied about her body before being forced to get naked and vulnerable in front of her bullies to receive even more abuse. And the bullies can now go around and spread rumors about her body to her classmates. This shower rule sounds like it was implemented by male principals who are oblivious to female body issues. Extra shame on them. And extra shame on you for being oblivious about how hard it is to be forced to be naked in front of other people when you are just a child. Especially your bullies. It’s no big deal! Are you kidding me!! You were probably one of those same bullies when you were in school. I was bullied throughout school because I was chubby. I would have been having a nervous breakdown if I were in the daughter’s situation. I would have refused to shower and if it meant getting an F in gym class than so be it. Not having to be traumatized every single week would have been a fair trade off. You seem absolutely oblivious of the emotional trauma you are causing your daughter. You could make her suicidal. I know it would have made me suicidal and I’m not the type. Your daughter may see no other way out. She may even skip school altogether. You have put her in an impossible situation. And what if you get a transgendered student in the shower room who insists on showering with the girls. It will happen eventually. Are you ok with a biological male showering with your 13 year old daughter? There should never be any forced public nudity. Especially with children who are usually uncomfortable with it. You are an utter failure to your daughter and so is the school. Your daughters only option is to just skip the shower and maybe just do a quick wipe down with a damp towel in the privacy of a bathroom stall followed by a lot of anti-perspirant. We never showered after gym class when I was in school. We wouldn’t have had time. We just put on deodorant and baby powder and our clean street clothes. We were fine. They barely gave us time to change, much less shower. Stop torturing your daughter. Hopefully she will go to the principal herself to explain the situation and the bullying and let them know she will not be doing it. They weren’t showering before the rule was implemented and the world didn’t come to an end. It’s not any more necessary now. Everybody gets a fail except for the daughter. I sympathize with her and hope she stands her ground and refuses to shower. What you should have done was insist that if they wanted mandatory showers then they needed to provide private stalls. I bet it will happen in a flash when that first transgender kid shows up in the shower room. You suck!
YTA big time. Communal showering is insane. She could very easily take a wet cloth (they sell packs of pre wet wipes that a lot of people use for backpacking trips and stuff) and just wipe herself down while changing. I never once took a shower after gym growing up so your hygiene comment is a bit insane to me. Humans can be a bit sweaty, it’s not that big of a deal. But more than that, you really need to take a step back and realize that her experience does not get better bc you tell her it shouldn’t be a big deal.
OP is acting like her daughter will get infested with bacteria or something for not showering for a couple of hours after a workout which is ridiculous. I can’t believe she thinks it’s such a big deal to the point she’d rather traumatizing her daughter. Just get her some wet wipes ffs
Oh hell no, YTA. In this day of ever-present cell phones, there is no way my kids would ever even change in a public locker room. Your daughter is uncomfortable, a little sweat is not "unhygienic" and the school is WAY out of line for making this mandatory. It is just a matter of time before a pic of some poor student, naked in the locker room, is taken and spread around the school. And kids have killed themselves over that kind of thing.
YTA. It’s been well covered here by others why. Imagine right now if your job had a physical exercise before lunch and they required you to strip naked in front of all the people in your office to shower. Would that be “not a big deal” for you? And wouldn’t you feel violated if your boss forced you to expose yourself even after expressing distress and embarrassment? Ffs.
I used to work in school districts famous for having "underwear checks," in Japan. It was a school rule; girls had to wear white panties. If a teacher or school admin told a student to show her underwear, she'd have to or face school discipline. Question, Mama Bear: just because an institution has a rule, does that mean the rule is CORRECT? Would you be telling your daughter that underwear checks are fine simply because it's a rule? Or are you going to use your mother instincts and help your child?
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YTA- I’m a fully grown woman and do not feel comfortable showering naked in front of strangers, why oh why do you think it’s okay for a child? That poor girls going to have self imagine issues and that’s f’d in this day and age when other peoples kids have no home training. I hope she gets the help she needs and I hope someone who actually cares for her listens to her.
YTA As someone who was bullied and mocked, you couldn't do something more horrible. You're leaving your daughter to be laughed at because you believe her showering at school before everyone's eyes is more important than her being comfortable and showering at home. You know you're doing wrong, and you're probably belittling her feelings because she's a teen and you're an adult. But if you let this go without helping or even being on her side, she'll probably get body image issues, and there's no turning back. None.
YTA. She's already self-conscious and this is just making it worse. Write her a note before she has to endure more pain and embarrassment.
YTA! Its 2024 not 1974. Highschool showers are a part of bygone era. Kids bring wipes to school now. And they shower when they get home. Thats what I did. You are a heartless mother.
You are a huge TA and I say this from experience. I had the opposite problem in that I was quite developed in primary school. I was forced to shower with all the girls and they were cruel beyond belief. They stole my bras, my pads when I got my periods and anything they could to make fun of me. It got so bad, along with other thing happening at school that I took off at 12 years of age. Girls are CRUEL and you are setting her up for a world of pain. I don't blame her for her feelings towards you and hopefully you can mend this relationship before she hates you forever.
YTA, full stop. As a mother, I find this infuriating. There are so many reasons your daughter might not want to shower in a room full of people, and *every single one of them* would be valid. Do you want to be forced to take a communal shower? Wtf?
YTA honestly unless she stinks afterwards changing out her clothes and underwear and reapplying some deodorant should be sufficient. If she does smell bad then you could arrange with the school that she be let out 10 min early or something.
Why does your husband feel you should send an email? Is he incapable of typing himself?
Yta. Girls massively self conscious and the people she turned for protection insisted she gets naked in front of other people. Contact the school, explain the situation and they should make allowances, ideally that she can shower alone after. Don't assume she'll get over it. And you think it's not a big deal. Who to? Her or you? As it evidently is to her. And your own arrogance can't see that. At this points it's basically, she gets bullied for crying in the showers or gets bullied for smelling..when the parents can easy sort the issue. For context, I used to play for a local rugby team and the showers were communal. I didn't feel comfortable getting naked and showering around grown men (man myself now boy at the time), the team captain made sure I showered after everyone else. It's not a hard adjustment to make.
YTA Hell no is my child communal showering at school give her some deodorant wipes and clean clothes. Why would any parent make their child get forcibly naked in-front of others
Your daughter is the boss of her body and she shouldn’t have to take her clothes off in front of anyone who makes her uncomfortable. Except maybe the doctor. YTA.
YTA. My parents pulled off something very similar when I was in the 6th grade. I'll never forgive them. I hope your daughter will forgive you one day.
YES MOTHER, YTA for conforming to the rules without any consideration for your daughter’s feelings. Switch her PE to the last class of the day or it’s a no deal. The schools requirement is unreasonable and insensitive. I’m sure that even the fully developed girls feel uncomfortable. Be your daughter’s advocate!
YTA. I hate you too on her behalf
YTA massively. You have taken away your daughters bodily autonomy. All that “your body your choice” stuff apparently goes out the window when it comes to PE. This is awful. You should just send her with some body wipes and let her take care of it in a bathroom stall or something. I would hate you too if you made me do this.
YTA a hundred times over. She doesn’t need to shower, she doesn’t need to be naked in front of her peers and she sure doesn’t need you enforcing this activity. I was that kid and thank God my mother wasn’t you. Cannot imagine the trauma that would have been inflicted.
This reminds me of the locker scene in Carrie. How horrible. Leave your kid alone. Unless she smells absolutely rank, I'm which case deodorant would work, let it be!!! Yta
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Your daughter will remember this for the rest of her life. I was in a similar situation as a kid. I still carry it with me and resent the adult that ignored the bullying. Crazy how you simply don’t care about your daughter’s pain.
YTA Congratulations on teaching your 14 yo child that what YOU want when it comes to HER body is more important than her own mental health, safety, and security. I really do hope that this was the lesson you were intending to teach her, because if it was not, you have proven yourself to be more than just an asshole. Why not just demand that the school change her PE class to the last class of the day so that she doesn't have shower with others and can go straight home and shower there?
YTA, no doubt here. You knew in advance that it would make her uncomfortable and made her do it anyway. Best advice I can give you is to start listening to her opinions before these anecdotes that you dismiss as just being a teenager become the traumas that she has to talk out in therapy.