Why I Rarely Worry About Germs

I was going to write this yesterday but was horribly unmotivated to write anything so it didn’t get done. Thems the breaks I guess.

In Isaac and my everyday life we do a lot of different things. We play inside, we play outside, we eat and we go run errands. I know that doesn’t sound like much but there are a lot of different activities involved in the “play” category.

With everything we do, however, there’s one thing we don’t do very often, and that’s wash our hands.

I’m a firm believer that a lot of parents try to protect their kids from germs too much. We plaster our kids hands with antibacterial soap that kills 99.9% of germs, leaving only the strongest germs and making them more powerful. We’re killing off the weakest forms rather than letting them deal with it for themselves.

So I’ll take Isaac outside, he’ll put his hands on the deck, pick up sticks and grass and just be a kid. Then we’ll come inside, I’ll brush his hands off and then give him lunch. I don’t worry about lingering dirt on his hands because, in my opinion, it’s not going to hurt him and might actually help his immune system. His hands get washed when he takes a bath (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and as needed), when he gets poop on his hands (which happens on a not so infrequent basis) and a few other times that don’t come to mind right now. It’s pretty much the same for me, except add in dealing with raw meat.

A while back (a month of so) Erin and I went to a birthday party with Isaac at Jumpin’ Jungle. Isaac played on all the toys and had a blast. Then it came time for everyone to move into a new room for cake and drinks. On the way in there was an employee with a huge bottle of hand sanitizer pumping massive amounts into everyone’s hands. I felt obligated to take some even though I wasn’t concerned at all with my hand health (he put so much on that it was several minutes, and some wiping on my clothes, before my hands felt normal). Call it peer pressure, but I did it.

Why are so many people so worried about their kids getting dirty? I’ve seen parents who will go up and wipe their kid off while they’re still playing outside, which to me is completely pointless. I understand doing it if it’s an actual health concern (parents of preemies can do whatever they please, I would probably freak if someone sneezed within 100 feet of Isaac if he was a preemie), but I don’t get the obsession.

So if you ever hang out with Isaac and me and you don’t see us washing our hands, just know that you probably won’t. We’re not disgusting people, we just choose not to worry about it.