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with Nataly
Hi, I am Nataly and I am the co-founder of Work It, Mom!
I write the daily Work It, Mom! Blog where I talk about issues affecting working moms, goings on in our Work It, Mom! community, new site features, updates,and contests. I also share my own juggle between work and family and love to see members jump in with comments. Come and visit often!
Nataly's profile on Work It, Mom!
I’m a self-admitted neat freak. I’d like to say that I’m this way because I grew up sharing a tiny one-bedroom apartment with my parents, but I’m fairly certain I was born this way. Well, the fact that my mom seems to have born this way has surely contributed to the fact that I can’t go to sleep if the house isn’t clean.
After our daughter was born and the amount of time I had left to clean up and organize was reduced to almost nothing, my neat freakishness did chill out a bit, but not as it related to my daughter. I have way too many sanitizer bottles in my bag, anything my daughter puts in her mouth is either washed, peeled or cooked, and when we come home she reminds me to wash my hands.
Well, apparently my clean obsession isn’t just silly but unnecessary because dirt is good for kids. When they get dirty they expose their immune system to germs and train it to develop and get stronger. Or so say several studies profiled in this article.
According to one researcher, “children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat.” I won’t lie — reading this literally makes me cringe. But I get the point and it makes a lot of sense. Not so much sense that I am going to build a dirt pile outside of our house and invite my daughter to play there but enough to rethink my frequent use of hand sanitizer and worrying about protecting my daughter from germs all the time.
What about you: Do you lean towards the overly anti-germ, clean side or take it easy when it comes to kids and dirt?
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Ha! My kids have been getting all the benefits of dirt since they came home. My younger daughter had allergies, but they cleared up after all the dust and dirt exposure. Go figure, huh?
My only reservation would be if the dirt was from a place likely to be contaminated with an especially high concentration of nasty germs and/or environmental hazards. We live in a suburb where the dirt is essentially natural. If we lived in a very concentrated area, I would think twice before letting my kids eat with grubby fingers.
SKL | February 4th, 2009 at 12:45 am
hello, i am new here, my son is 10 weeks old and when i first had him i was obsessed with keeping him and everything around him clean, we have 2 dogs and now he is almost 3 months old, i let the dogs lick his hands and feet, he sometimes puts his hand in his mouth afterwards, well he is fine and his immune system is building up, being too clean is not good, i know friends who told me to get rid of my animals while i was pregnant, that bringing up a child with dogs is disgusting, etc… i didn’t listen cos those same people have children who suffer from asthma and allergies because they were too clean…. in the old days, we didn’t have all the sterilizing/ antibacterial bollocks we have now and babies still survived, at the end of the day, each to their own, but dirt is good
Emilie | February 4th, 2009 at 7:53 am
I was a bigger clean freak BEFORE I had a baby; back then, you could literally eat off the floor in my house. Even my kitchen garbage cans were squeaky clean from being disinfected twice a day. But since having my daughter, I simply do not have the time to keep up with anything nearly resembling my old cleaning routine. Now, it’s all I can do to make sure the dirty diapers are in the garbage can, the dirty dishes are soaking in the sink, and the dirty clothes are in my husband’s closet (keeping them in there makes me feel better and is a nice reminder that the laundry is HIS job). The floors get mopped only on the weekends, so my baby often has dusty knees. This has been a difficult thing for me to come to terms with, but I read that same NY Times article yesterday and it made me feel a lot less guilty! I still hate the idea of animals living in the house, though - I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I always found that to be sort of gross. Maybe someday we’ll get a fish and I’ll let my daughter stick her hand in the tank?
Jesse | February 4th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I used to be more careful than I am now. I have dogs, too and they lick him a little. He also finds their rubber bones around the house and from time to time I will find him carrying one around in his mouth. I will not let him eat with filthy hands, though, somewhat dirty is okay but not filthy. I also draw the line at letting him touch things like the toilet plunger, which he grabbed one day right after it had been used and started touching the gross part. I scrubbed his hands after that one!
Oceans Mom | February 4th, 2009 at 9:10 am
My husband is the clean freak. I’m messy and he is constantly cleaning up after me, apparently. I don’t really notice it, but it bugs him. I’m far less fastidious about having the kids wash hands before eating, etc. OTOH, we shower or bathe the children every night, and sometimes twice if they are sick and need to steam out their sinuses. We keep the house as clean as possible, with three adults, two large indoor/outdoor dogs, two toddlers and 6 baby chicks living here.
spacegeek | February 4th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I don’t have the time or patience to be a neat freak, so my kids probably have awesome immune systems.
It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just not something that I think about. My first grader knows to wash his hands after using the bathroom, before eating and when he gets home from school. I think that’s good enough.
I think I will send a link to that article to my mother in law.
Kaycee | February 4th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I’m definitely not a germaphobe. Also, I happen to have an 18 month old with food allergies. So, while I agree with most of what this article says, I will admit that I get a little touchy/resentful towards the conclusion that some (not all) people draw, which is that all food allergies must come from people behaving like germaphobes. Actually, it’s funny, it’s like I find myself feeling like saying, “I swear people, our house is filthy!” : ) (It’s not really, but you know what I mean.) We don’t use antibacterial soaps, and we don’t use harsh cleansers - just environmentally friendly stuff, etc. We also happen to use cloth diapers that we wash at home (rather than using a service). (Point not being that that’s any dirtier than disposables, because I don’t think it is; point just being that I’m not personally afraid of dirt or germs.) Also, another point that I think gets forgotten when people read these articles (at least as they relate to allergies), is that there is a difference between letting a 5 year old run around outside, play in the dirt and come in for dinner, and setting your 2 month old down in the dirt to roll around. I think that even in the “olden days”, no one was really doing that. And as much as we’re all in favor of a certain amount of healthy exposure to dirt and germs, everyone also knows the seriousness of a very young infant coming down with any illness involving fever. So, these things have to be taken into consideration. I wonder sometimes if in an effort to let my daughter have this healthy exposure, I’m going too far in the other direction. I’ve been known (before she was walking) to let her crawl on the floor at the mall. (oh horrors! gasp!) Lastly, for what it’s worth, I’ll just add that according to our allergist, there is a lot of misunderstanding on the internet about what the “hygiene hypothesis” really means. She said it is more of a societal thing, comparing the way we live now to the way true agrarian societies did 100 years ago (or currently do in some areas of the world), as opposed to a personal thing involving 1 person’s use of too many cleansers in their home compared to another person’s avoidance of the same. Maybe she was just trying to make me feel better about having a child with food allergies, but she did make me laugh by saying, “hey, don’t beat yourself up about hygiene practices, because unless you’re moving livestock into your condo, there’s no difference.”
Kate | February 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm