Can germs be good for children?
Let germs be your kiddo’s new companion. Sounds weird right?Today, we live in an age of disinfectants, sterilizers, and antiseptic hand sanitizers, where parents make it a point to clean and sanitize almost anything and everything their baby touches. Children catching infections due to germs has become a major worry amongst the modern-day parents and guardians. But there was a time when parents would allow their kids to play in the mud, make sandcastles or even exchange contact with pets. In contemporary times, the dread of allergy and contagion have led parents to adopt to squeaky-clean ways while dealing with kids.
While most parents will reminisce about their childhood, they spent playing in the rain or sunshine outside their homes, it’s a rarity for children these days to replicate the good-old-days. In this tech-savvy world, kids are more likely to devote their vacations spending hours with their gadgets and on social media rather than making mud pies. By keeping a distance from Mother Nature and trying not to get dirty, your tiny munchkins may just be missing out on more than just creating memories. It is time to swing the pendulum back in time and comprehend the fact that there is no harm in letting your child get dirty, for germs are not always bad.
Moreover, parents, these days prevent their kids from getting muddy, worried that children may fall prey to the infections while they play. The idea is to inspire parents to ease up on cleanliness and hygiene. It’s recommended for children to stay outdoors more, bask in the sun, playing with the sand and directly coming in contact with nature. The truth is, a little bit of dirt is essentially a good thing as it has been shown to condense allergies without increasing the peril of infection. Kids must be exposed to certain microorganisms to build up their immunity and defend them against ailments and allergies in the upcoming years. This does not mean one must neglect hygiene and cleanliness aspects, as it is imperative to properly wash your and your children’s hands after playing in the mud.
Below mentioned are things that parents should allow their kids to do to get a healthy exposure to dirt and germs.
- Move your kids Outdoors: Let your growing child step out of the house and get in close contact with the environment. Allow your toddlers to play in the water, dig in the dirt, play in the mud, pick up worms from ponds, roll on the ground, catch frogs and tadpoles.
- Let them play in the sand: Playing in the sand helps your child to ease, pacify and calm down. It also helps to stimulate imagination and creativity and acts as a wonderful medium of art. What’s more, outdoors also lend kids a little dose of the required vitamin D which facilitates in preventing autoimmune illnesses.
- Allow them to play with pets: A significant part of exposing your child to the beneficial microbes is to get them in touch with pets. Letting your child come in close contact with the dog/cat has a great possibility to reduce his or her danger of contracting various unwanted childhood allergies, asthma and other ailments in later life.
- Your child should learn to taste things: You need to allow your baby to try a bit of touching and even tasting the natural world around them. Infections like catching a common cold or cough are usually produced by worms that encroach into the nose, throat, ears or sinuses. Catching a cold can be helpful as it lingers to train the baby’s immune system to be well adjusted and capable enough to recognize and deal with pathogens.
- Don’t do too much of Laundry Loads: Germs thrive easily on apparels, and excessive laundry will nothing but kill them, thus doing no good to the burgeoning immune system of the baby. Sometimes, parents should lend clothes to a couple of good wears before the laundry.
- Consuming Fermented Edibles: Intake of simple white flour, white sugar, and refined edibles won’t reach the bacteria, as it gets effortlessly absorbed higher up, in the abdomen and small intestine. Edibles that are high in fibre, nuts, legumes, and vegetables are faultless microbe foods, being broken down by them in the large intestine. Now is the time for you to introduce more microbes to your child’s gut by offering them fermented edibles often, such as yogurt.
- Gardening with your child: This is the simplest way to let your child get close to good germs. The presence of various environmental organisms will offer the immune system with all that it needs to operate efficiently.