Over Sanitized
Today, I saw another over protective mother today over sanitizing her child today. I see this too much these days. You know the type: over protective, over sanitizing, and over mothering.
I bring this up because it made me think of all the news coverage about kids having asthma, allergies, and other illnesses in greater frequency these days. Personally, I don't know if there is any truth this, but if you assume it is true, I have a theory: Children these days are over sanitized. Some germs are good and help kids build immunities.
When we were kids:
- We were taught to wash our hands, but we did use anti-bacterial hand sanitizer on everything
- We were exposed to chicken pox, and we got over it
- We didn't have car seats, we wore seat belts
- We didn't wear bike helmets
- Scrapping your knee meant cleaning it off and maybe a band-aid, not first aid, an emergency room, or a lawsuit
- The kid with the allergy avoided the cause, and the whole class wasn't ordered not to bring common (and frugal) lunch items to school
I could go on and on . . .
My wife gives the kids the same advice she was raised on-- "Get over it!" I think you get the idea.
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Categories: Frugality, Health/Fitness, Parenting, Simple Living, Personal Philosophy
Tags: Safety Frugality Parenting Frugal Health Simple Living Kids Personal Philosophy
George Carlin was an American hero because of his insight, honesty, courage and intellect. He advised that we protect our children too much, so we weaken them and then they're not prepared naturally to protect themselves. He said that our immune systems needed practice.
I think he was right. With his best materials later in life, George always offered us 95% truth and 5% shock value. Either way, it was funny and instructive.
Clair
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I think this overlooks the problems we had in the past when we didn’t sanitize. People died from infections, but we don’t remember those people. I remember one, though, Irving Ingram got an infection and died when we were in second grade.
When I started driving, seat belts were only on race cars. People died because cars lacked seat belts because passengers were launched through the windshield in a crash. Now we should accept the seat belt but not the booster seat that accommodates the difference between the child’s body size and the adult?
I have not personally known anyone whose head was bashed in due to a bicycle crash; but I certainly had some crashes that might have done it if circumstances had been just slightly different.
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