My parents never found a way to make my brother effectively brush his teeth, shower, wash his hands, or wipe himself. Now he’s 32.
He will not brush his teeth unless we insist, and then he’ll just brush his front two teeth for about 10 seconds and call it good. I’ve watched him do this, and when asked if he really brushed each tooth and his tongue, he’ll lie and say ‘I did! I always do!’ He eats probably 4x the recommended amount of sugar per day too, and as a result has a mouth full of plaque that the dentists have to chip off in big pieces and has recently had to get rotting molars pulled out.
He will not take a shower unless we insist, and when he comes out he still reeks from head to foot of BO, pee and poop. I don’t know what he does in there but it is obviously not at all effective. He admitted that sometimes he simply stands outside the shower and sticks his head under the water briefly to get it wet so that it looks like he took a shower because he’s annoyed by our mom nagging him. It’s infuriating. He is pretty good about using spray-on deodorant, but that’s useless unless he has first gotten clean, which he never does.
He’ll put on dirty clothes after a ‘shower’ without a second thought. His clean and dirty clothes always end up mixed together. He’ll wear the same underwear, socks, pants, and shirt for a week unless we make him change. Again, what’s the use of deodorant if he just goes and puts filthy clothes on a filthy body?
He will not wash his hands unless we insist, and if we’re not standing by him and instructing him he will run his hands briefly under the water without any soap or scrubbing. He doesn’t even put his entire hand in the water, just the tips of his fingers. I’ve watched him do this so many times. ‘Are you using soap and rubbing your hands together?’ ‘Yes I am!’
He has toenail fungus from wearing the same socks all the time and his toenails are huge and orange and have now grown over and around his toes.
And the worst, and hardest to enforce now that he’s 32, is never wiping. He simply does not wipe. He pees/takes a BM and immediately stands up and puts his underwear back on.
He is intelligent, sociable, charismatic, and I believe fully capable of doing all of these things if it was enforced early, which obviously it was not. Now he’s 32, I’m 27, they’re in their late 60’s and we’re all frustrated. He gets defensive and angry whenever we try to address these things. He has had many violent outbursts over the years and on some level we are all a little bit afraid of him. He still lives at home. My parents deserve better than this, so does he!
Any advice for me, for my parents?
*I do not live at home anymore but I visit often enough to witness what I’ve described, and I talk to my mom often and she fills me in on his daily hygiene struggles*