<p>Let them get dirty. I always thought the rise in all these childhood illnesses was due to excessive coddling and over-protection. Same goes for emothional health. In order to learn how to handle situations and life you need to live a little.</p>
<p><a href=“http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIRTY_RATS?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT[/url]”>http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIRTY_RATS?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, I’ve said this for YEARS and YEARS!!! Of course, I’ve said this as a justification for my, ummmmmmmm, less than anal-retentive housekeeping standards <em>lolololololololol</em> 
Nevertheless, I have the MEGA-HEALTHY kids to support the validity of this claim. Yeah, LET 'EM GET DIRTY!!! 
~berurah</p>
<p>Yes, I also have extremely healthy kids, also brought up under circumstances that drove my obsessive-compulsive mother-in-law nuts. Here’s to bad housekeeping! </p>
<p>Also, when my kids go to college I let them sleep on linens straight out of the package, without washing them first.</p>
<p>Well, we may be decreasing our kids’ exposure to dirt through our obsessive cleanliness, but we’re certainly exposing them to plenty of germs in other ways by putting them in group care at younger and younger ages. I suspect that the two trends tend to cancel each other out.</p>
<p>ut we’re certainly exposing them to plenty of germs in other ways by putting them in group care at younger and younger ages</p>
<p>Which if they have a healthy immune system is a great way to get it up and running by being exposed to common viruses like Chicken pox, so that by the time they are school age, they wont miss so much school for minor illnesses</p>
<p>( of course I nursed my kids till they could get their own milk out of the fridge- so they had the benefit of my immune system as well )</p>
<p>Wow, Mickey Rourke is going to live forever.</p>
<p><a href=“of%20course%20I%20nursed%20my%20kids%20till%20they%20could%20get%20their%20own%20milk%20out%20of%20the%20fridge-%20so%20they%20had%20the%20benefit%20of%20my%20immune%20system%20as%20well”>quote=emeraldkity4</a>
[/quote]
<strong><em>ROFLMAO</em></strong> Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee tooooooooooooooooo!!! :)</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>At least you didn’t nurse them until they could drive to the 7-11 to buy their own milk.</p>
<p>my kids were always dirty…they had fun!!</p>
<p>we went camping once at this place that has a cafeteria…anyway, parents would show up with little kids are perfectly dressed and wouldn’t let the kids play before dinner, lest they get dirty</p>
<p>me, my kids basically showered after swimming, and climbed rocks, got dirty again before dinner, so I just wiped off the hands and into the cafeteria we went…to see these little kids camping having to stay a clean was just sad</p>
<p>part of the problem is the overuse of anti bacterial soaps, sprays, etc so that when there is a real problem the antibiotics aren’t as effective</p>
<p>I played with kids all the time when I was little, not in a structed program, and i got the usual sniffles that my kids had</p>
<p>the over washing and cleaning and anti bacterial stuff doesn’t allow our own body to deal with germs</p>
<p>I think it is fine to let your child or childeren play hard, work hard, and just get muddy. But at the end of the day that child needs a bath. I am a first time mother of a 5 mth old baby boy. I see no problem as he gets older letting him run covering his little knees with dirt. </p>
<p>We all had some dirt to it when we were kids. It was sometimes our snack for the day (kidding!) By letting them do certain germy things it will strength their immunze systems. But if they are not getting their baths at night and washing their hands through out the day. Then we as their parent(s) are going backwards.</p>
<p>Berurah, me too. I have the dirty house and the healthy kids. This news has been out for a few years. Once I made a joke to my ultra neat and clean MIL about how I was not overdoing it on the cleaning because it was bad for the kids immune systems. She didn’t get it. Oh well. </p>
<p>My own twist on the theory is that it is not the dust, smudged walls and so on that helps the kids immune systems, but less exposure to all the chemicals in the concoctions used to clean the house. Too much of that in the environment is baaad. IMO.</p>
<p>mstee~</p>
<p>My MIL doesn’t get it etiher–but neither does she really care enough about establishing a relationship with these kids to visit more than once every two or more years (for a day or two), so no battles there! <em>lol</em></p>
<p>I’m with you…the chemicals FAR outweigh the dirt in their ability to harm kids. We use only the most basic cleaning stuff…and rarely! :eek:</p>
<p>Speaking of smudged walls…we have a “graffiti wall” in our upstairs bathroom! The kids, in their younger years, wrote love notes to each other on this wall, much to my chagrin at the time. And yet, last year, when we had the house appraised, I just could not bear to paint over it…<em>sniff</em> So, it is still there, and probably will be until such time as we decide to sell the ol’ homestead! ;)</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Magen, why is the first time mother of a baby boy posting on College COnfidential? Isn’t it a little early to be planning on college for him? (Please tell me that’s not the reason.)</p>
<p>This reminds me of the first time I gave my oldest a bath- she was about maybe 1 month or a 1 & 1/2 months old- but she was still in the hospital ( she was discharged at 8 weeks)
I set up the heat lamps- got the little basin out- got the water just the right temprature- we must have had to take her monitors off- which made me really nervous- always before the nurses had given her the bath- or kept her clean anyway- but this time they wanted me to do it.
So I was all prepared for her first bath- in the florescent lights of the neonatal nursery but what do babies do when they feel nice warm water?
THats right, she released her bowels and I freaked out or wanted to.
Boy does that bring back memories
Another germ exposure when she was just 1 & half, we were sitting on our front steps enjoying the summer weather and she picked up a dessicated slug I hadn’t noticed and licked it. 
She has been fairly healthy since.</p>
<p>lol, not 100% planning, did start a college fund though. But accuatlly I am the one in college.</p>
<p>My kids have been blessed with healthy immune systems, too - but should we credit the extended nursing (check), the casual housekeeping (double check), or 500 generations of peasant ancestry for their good fortune? Our family tree is pretty undistinguished, but I’ve always been grateful for the hardy set of genes passed along by those eastern European serfs and peasants. They were the opposite of coddled, of course - if they got sick and survived, it wasn’t because good nutrition, sanitation, or medical care (or whatever passed for these in the olden days) pulled them through!</p>
<p>Other nice benefits of being from peasant stock: tendency not to die in childbirth; ability to store fat efficiently in times of famine (and at other times too, gosh darn it).</p>
<p>frazzled1 - I think we may be twins, separated at birth! (Except my ancestors are mainly western European. Oh well, the borders changed often.)</p>
<p>My oldest child was misdiagnosed with asthma for years - ended up being reflux, now surgically repaired. I still remember my embarrassment and shame when a well-meaning friend suggested that his problems would go away if I were a better housekeeper. I was a nurse, and learned way back when (about 21 years ago, if I remember correctly) that there was an association between kids’ allergies and their environments: the more sterile the environment, the greater the chance of developing allergies. That was NOT the reason I was messy, but it’ll do.</p>
<p>“The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people’s immune systems aren’t being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body’s natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.”</p>
<p>Sounds like a good theory, but I’m not sure it really pans out. Children exposed to second hand cigarette smoke (and what could be dirtier than that?) turn out to be more, not less, likely to develop asthma and allergies. Also, it is now quite common for children to be in daycare from an early age. These children are certainly exposed to more germs and disease than when it was more common for children to be kept home and only play with siblings and neighborhood children until they reached school age. Yet the rates of allergy and asthma are increasing, not decreasing.</p>
<p>Yes, and let them have animals too. I’ve heard that too helps the immune system to develop and results in less allergies. Pigs, cows chickens, bring them in .</p>
<p>my mom (she’d be 100 if she were still around!) had a saying when we were growing up that you had to eat a peck of dirt before you died…
i think there is a lot of truth to those old sayings.<br>
I remember reading that the polio epidemic seemed to affect children who only occassionally went swimming in the water holes/dirty rivers and not rural children who were exposed to more germs from animals, more frequent swimming, etc…</p>