April 05, 2006
Bubble Babies
An interesting little piece over at CNN this afternoon arguing that exposing the little 'uns to the hurly-burly of everyday germs and dirt toughens them up. What amused me about it, though, was this description of the behavior of a self-described "clean freak":
Kara Sherry of Columbus, Ohio, says her kids are also rarely sick, and she's a self-described "clean freak."She sanitizes the family's toothbrushes by putting them either in the dishwasher or boiling water.
When she goes grocery shopping, she wipes down the edges of the cart with antibacterial wipes before her children Sam, 3 ½, and Hayden, 5, climb in.
Her daughter Carly, almost 2, sits on a piece of fabric in the front of the grocery cart that covers the handle. Kara said she never touches the handle of a grocery cart, and would never let her children touch it either.
"Anything could be on that handle," she said. "Someone could have gone to the bathroom and not washed their hands, someone could have a cut on their hand. It could be staph, E. coli, it could be anything."
She said she does this out of "love and protection. I look at it as a way, as another way I protect my kids."
Wow. I look at it as a way to give oneself an ulcer and turn one's kids into hypocondriacal twits. Who the hell has the time or energy for this kind of carrying on?
I recall that when the eldest Llama-ette came along, we did, in fact, go through a great deal of daily hullabaloo about sanitizing bottles and binkies (what you call pacifiers), plunging them in boiling water the instant they touched an unauthorized surface. But as time passed, we gradually moved past this sort of thing. By the time the second Llama-ette came along, binkies were subjected to cursory wipes if they fell on the floor and the 5 second rule was in place for food that had done the same.
As for the youngest Llama-ette, well, once when she was crawling around the kitchen and lost her binky, the Missus (who was busy cooking dinner and talking on the phone) simply noodged it back over in front of her with her shoe.
I'm not suggesting we should let the kids play with discarded medical samples. But I agree with the basic thrust of the article that it is more beneficial to allow them to build up their internal defenses through ordinary exposure to the world than it is to try and sanitize everything for them.
Posted by Robert at April 5, 2006 03:09 PM | TrackBackHeh. Being an actively participatory auntie and uncle helped prep us for reality, and so when TFR and I had The Lad, our parental paranoia levels were much lower than is standard, especially in regards to perceived biohazards. We tried/try to keep things as clean as possible, but we've never really overdone it.
Posted by: Brian B at April 5, 2006 03:21 PM"I'm not suggesting we should let the kids play with discarded medical samples."
C'mon, the Jersey shore has so much to offer you.
Those poor kids are not only going to be hypochondriacs, they'll probably fall into a Howard Hughes level of obsessive germophobia.
Posted by: rbj at April 5, 2006 03:23 PMWhen reading something like this, I always think about the old George Carlin bit:
in my neighborhood, no one ever got polio. No one, *ever*. You know why? Cause we swam in the East River. We swam in raw sewage! It strengthened our immune systems, the polio never had a prayer...
Posted by: Rex Ferric at April 5, 2006 03:24 PMThis should be obvious to anyone who has ever had a vaccine, but sadly the logic seems to escape many. If the germophobes really knew what they were ingesting/touching/breathing everyday, they would go catatonic...
Posted by: LB Buddy at April 5, 2006 03:32 PMAmen! Amen!
Posted by: Jordana at April 5, 2006 04:43 PMI am reminded of the classic Invader Zim Episode, "Germs"....
Posted by: caltechgirl at April 5, 2006 05:10 PMOh the sad irony when these kids come down with bad allergies or autoimmune disorders later in life because their bodies' immune systems never learned to distinguish between themselves and real invaders.
Posted by: JohnL at April 5, 2006 05:13 PMYeah, well, send your kid to public school, Lord knows they'll come home with every imaginable virus and germ out there.
Son has had a runny, stuffy nose since September. He's just getting over a bad sinus infection, and today he was home with a stomach ache and fever.
I feed him, make sure he's bathed and has lots of rest, and I make him wash his hands when he gets home from school or where ever he's been, but I can't control what he does at school.
I wasn't an "anal" mother in that I scoured everything that touched my babies, but I practice common sense. It seems to me, at least, that some parents don't practice common sense stuff like, oh, washing hands after blowing a nose or stuff like that.
This is a sore subject with me, like I said, Son has been battling something since September and I'm at my wits end. Today is not the day for me to talk about kids' health.
Posted by: GroovyVic at April 5, 2006 05:50 PMWhen my son first went to school, I was sick for about a year. But this reminds me of a story my grandmother tells about how obsessive she was with child #1 (my mom) until one day she saw her pick up chewing gum from the ground and pop it into her mouth.
Posted by: Rachel at April 5, 2006 06:33 PMYeah! Heh. I remember boiling everything for #1 son.
We plan on allowing Peanut (#3 son) to juggle knives.
Oh and, I'm sure you've seen this: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama.php
xoxo
Love,
M
Image courtesy of the lovely and talented 