Bathtub fingerpainting

Is your child unable to tolerate having messy hands?  Do they freak out the second an unpleasant texture touches their little fingers?  Mine too!  Both of my children had/have tactile defensiveness/hypersensitivity. My oldest who is now 6 has overcome this for the most part through OT and also better coping mechanisms as he grows, but my youngest who is now 3 is extremely resistant to things on his hands.  Forget messy art, painting hands, sticky or dirty play and fingerpainting.

I am always trying to figure out ways to expose my boys to messy sensory play without pushing them past their threshold.  It is a very fine line.  So when I stumbled upon some bathtub fingerpaint at the dollar section of Target the other day, I immediately thought this might be a great activity for bath time.  Now, normally I stay as far away from fingerpainting products as possible, as trying them in the past has been unpleasant to say the least.  Usually my youngest will immediately scream and wipe it off on whatever he sees first, his clothes, the wall, his hair.  When I saw the bathtub fingerpaint, I thought this has to have been thought up by an SPD mom.  I mean a child can put the messy texture on their hands and if they don't like it they can just stick their hand under the water to wash it off, plus it's soap too... Genius!

So I bought a tube and cautiously introduced it at bath time the other night.  To my surprise they were both very receptive to the idea of bath fingerpaint and were actually excited to try it.  My youngest let me squirt it on his hand and massage it into his hand a little before he washed it off.   Once his hand was clean, he asked for more and he started FINGERPAINTING on the bathtub wall.  What!?!?  I was so excited.  He would use one finger and sometimes his whole hand to swirl it around and paint the wall.  He'd wash his hand and ask for more.  We went through the entire tube during one bath time!

I think I will be trying some other sensory play activities in the bath tub from now on where my boys can feel more in control of getting the mess off their hands with a tub of water.  Have you ever had success with sensory play once you switched it to a new location?  I'd love to hear about it!