We all want to do everything we can to keep our children from getting sick. We feel terrible for them, it’s no fun to be sick. When you are a single parent, a sick child can become a major issue, there is no one else to share the burden of missed time from work, and if you don’t have the sick leave to take, it can mean missing work without pay.
So we fill our homes with everything we can find to stave off illness. Soaps, toothpaste and other personal hygiene items can be bought with anti bacterial agents. I used to have Hailey carry hand sanitizer in her back pack or purse so she could make sure her hands were clean before eating.
I know I’m not the only one, I see people with hand sanitizer on their desks at work. We have become a nation afraid of germs.
A new study has shown that all this anti bacterial stuff may actually be doing our children harm. It seems that anti bacterial agents can actually weaken our children’s immune systems making them more susceptible to developing allergies.
The study goes on to suggest that exposure to common germs in early childhood is necessary for our children to build a healthy immune system. If our children are not exposed their immune system becomes over active and can cause problems with food proteins, pollen and dander which can lead to allergies.
What’s a single mom to do? Germs lead to illness which results in time missed from work and school, allergies can cause so many other problems in just trying to reduce your children’s exposure.
Maybe we need to go back to the days of letting our children play in mud puddles, it seemed to work for me. I remember my grandmother telling me that the worst thing she ever did was to never let my mother get dirty, seems she was always sick. So she told me to let my babies get dirty, I think she was on to something.