Navigating bath time in a neuro-diverse family: A guest post by Kayla of Apple Inspired Life

Let's mix it up around here. I’m so excited to share a guest article by Kayla, a friend of mine from college, and now we’re both moms and bloggers! She’s sharing this wonderful insight about how she made bath time a bit more tolerable for her son through Grunge Goddess products. I keep seeing my child’s behavior in hers and it’s helping me understand my daughter more. And I hope a lot of parents in my boat read this post and educate ourselves about sensory disorders because it’s probably more prevalent than we think. Without further ado, here is Kayla's guest post.

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Hey Grunge Goddess Soap lovers! My name is KayLa Apple, author of Apple Inspired Life, and I’m super excited to be taking over Clarissa’s blog today!

Like a lot of you, I wear many hats during my everyday life – I’m a wife of a USMC Purple Heart Veteran, a stay-at-home mother of two children with special needs, and a special needs and mental health advocate.

As one can imagine, my neuro-diverse family is full of sensitivities and allergies,
which often make life quite a challenge. In 2018, my son, Apollo, was diagnosed
with severe nonverbal Autism, ADHD, Apraxia, and Sensory Processing Disorder. As it pertains to this post, Apollo not only has super sensitive skin and allergies (prone to eczema, rashes, and keratosis pilaris), he’s sensitive to textures, smells, sounds, etc.

Although Apollo has started to speak, and has developed many familiar words and phrases, he doesn’t quite have functional language – yet. When a child, or any individual cannot tell you in words, or gestures what’s bothering them, it makes ordinary tasks, like bathing quite a challenge. Prior to discovering Grunge Goddess Soaps bathing Apollo was a NIGHTMARE.

Imagine a human being trying to wrestle a baby alligator – that is about what it
was like to wash Apollo’s hair … there was biting, scratching… you get my drift. IT WAS AWFUL! For the longest time, Apollo required 2 people to bathe him to keep him safe. Of course we looked to the experts… tried all the strategies and
suggestions we were offered to no avail.

Unfortunately, children with special needs do not come with a parenting manual,
and in my case, my son couldn’t communicate to me what specifically was traumatic about bath time in a way I could understand. It wasn’t until Apollo started using Grunge Goddess’ Soaps that it dawned on me that he had been sensitive to all of the previous soap that I had used on him. For SO long I assumed Apollo didn’t like the overall experience, when he actually LOVES being in the water, he just HATED the soap.

Now, before you get too excited, Apollo still doesn’t like having help bathing, having his hair washed, etc. he’s still sensitive to touch, BUT bathing is now more manageable and less of a traumatic experience, than it was previously. And in our household, we celebrate all wins (big or small), and this for us is a total WIN! Want to know what’s even more AWESOME? These products are great and work for our entire family. Prior to making the switch, I was buying soaps from multiple different places, multiple different companies. I was adding more things to my already full-plate. I was spending a small fortune on mediocre soaps… soaps that irritated my children, soaps that made my hair super greasy the next day, soaps that dried out my skin and my hair. Soaps that just didn’t work!

I call Clarissa a soap magician, because somehow her soaps work for our entire
family; from my greasy hair – to my children’s dry/frizzy hair – it works great on us all. I never thought I could see a day where I went more than 1 day in-between hair washes and didn’t have to bathe in dry shampoo.

SO, if you are environmentally conscious, are looking for long-lasting soaps that
work for all skin/hair types, and don’t break the bank, then give Grunge Goddess
Soapworks a try – you won’t be disappointed!

If you are active on social media come say hi!

Instagram: @appleinspiredlife

www.appleinspiredlife.com

Love,
KayLa