About a year ago, out of nowhere (or so it seemed) Ms P refused to get in the bath. Overnight she appeared to have developed an irrational phobia of getting into it or being near it and, if we tried to put her in, clucking our tongues and telling her not to be silly – it’s just the bath – she’d go wild. And a slippery, kicking, rigid child above, in, or near water isn’t a combo made in heaven…And is distressing and upsetting for everyone concerned.

Ok then, would she have a shower? She would not. That serpent thing spraying water randomly about the place? Certainly not, mummy! So we had to sponge her down each night while we scratched our heads to try to come up with a solution.

We had a couple of false starts based on bribery: if you get in, I’ll give you an ice-cream! (you know how it goes).

Why I go for this option instead of what I’ve been trained to do, I don’t know. I’m a mum, I’m tired and I’m not always the best practitioner of my own advice, I guess.

Anyway, ice-cream bribery didn’t work. When we bribe, what we’re actually trying to do is find something competing that will sufficiently outweigh and override the stumbling block. All very well if you’re dealing with stubbornness- totally different with phobia.

And it was at this point I realised we were dealing with proper fear – not just ‘I’m not going to do it’ stubbornness, but a proper, bone fide phobia. And I felt awful for her.

Would I, for example, let a spider, moth or frog (SHUDDER) crawl over my face for an ice-cream? Pfffft. No. Would you?! Why should she?

When dealing with fears or behaviours that seem to come from nowhere, you have to become a bit of a detective – look at what’s going on around you, see if anything has changed in the environment. I’d noticed Ms P eyeballing the plug a few times during past baths, could that have been the problem?

So I probed a bit further and she talked about feeling like the bath was ‘tipping’. After going back and forth and searching my memory, I remembered that not long before, we’d had a shower together and she’d slipped over, sliding the length of the bath, right down to the plug hole, and it had upset her. Coupled with that seemed to be the idea that she felt in danger of being sucked down the plug hole. Scary stuff.

Easy solution – Get a good bath mat to cover the plug hole – one she chose herself – and get in the bath with her, adult at the tap end to prevent unsightly demise via plug hole suction. Genius.

Not genius. She was having none of it. Tried the ice-cream idea again, nup (it was worth a shot). And then I realised that the only way to deal with a fear is to confront it, with support, and to be exposed to it, bit by bit. It’s a technique used a lot in cognitive behavioural therapy, called systematic desensitisation.

Trick is knowing where to start and how far to push, and this isn’t easy. We have a tendency to want to solve a problem in one sitting, but with this kind of thing you really can’t rush it or you’ll stuff it up, or even make it worse. You have to be guided by your little one – they will let you know if you’re edging too far. Making somebody do something they don’t want to do isn’t your goal here. What you’re aiming to do is to show, through experience and exposure, that this scary situation is OK, that it is something they CAN do and that you’re right there to support them.

For us the first thing to do was to make sure we had the right set up. Environment is everything and I had to make sure it was working for me, not against me. So off we went to the pound shop, and Ms P picked out a new bathmat, new bubbles, new sponge and lots of new bath toys.

I had no intention, at this point, of getting her in the bath. What I had to do was re-build trust, first in the environment to show her that being in the bathroom was a safe thing to do, and in me – that I wasn’t going to suddenly scoop her up and plonk her in the bath.

At first we got a washing up bowl, put it on the floor of the bathroom, filled it with water and played with that and the new toys, bubble and sponge. Next we scooped some water from the bowl into the bath. Great! She got lots of praise for that. Now could she put some of the toys into the empty bath? Reluctantly she did it. Fab. We left it at that, with lots of hugs and reassurance.

The next time we got to the point of being able to put the toys in and out of the big bathtub which had been filled with about an inch of water. Could she get her hands wet? Could she wipe the inside of the bathtub with a flannel? Touch the taps? Pour water on the taps?

Next it was putting a foot in the bath – we began for a count of 3. Then out. Other foot – count of 3, then out. Both feet, count of 3. Out.

And so it went on, until after a couple of days, she could get her whole body in. If, during that time she asked to get out, that’s what happened. No questions asked. We supported her, praising her, distracting her with games and songs and water activities, but she called the shots on how long she wanted to stay there.

Finally we reached the point where she could go in, play happily, wash and get out. A normal bath time!

Nowadays, it’s as much as I can do to persuade her to get out of the bath. Although, we still cover up the plug hole with the bathmat – and that’s ok.

When the phobia presented itself, I didn’t recognise it as such. I though she was being stubborn. It was hard to accept that this thing had happened so dramatically and so fast. I thought I could simply change it back, snap her out of it and go back to how it was. What I hadn’t been doing was considering her thoughts and her feelings. When I finally did, it was much easier to identify the issue…and slowly work towards a solution.

If you have any questions about systematic desensitisation (because often you can take 2 steps forward and 3 steps back and find yourself stuck) then get in touch!