Germs are not bad

Have you ever seen the parents who Germ-X everything?  Bottles, toys, door knobs, pacifiers, the hands of every friend & family member that comes by for a visit... As a society, we have become such germaphobes that we sell/buy antibacterial everything!  Is it helping?  Are your kids any healthier?  Have you single handedly rid the world of Ebola? Probably not.

My cousin sanitized and Germ-Xed everything in her house and everything she came in contact with, and I swear her kid was sicker than any of ours.  She never had a chance to build up an immune system.  Her parents self-imposed "bubble" did more to cause her illnesses than any tiny germ could have.  Germ-X didn't exist when we were kids, and amazingly, we survived.  Antibacterial wipes weren't even dreamt of, and oddly, we were basically healthy.  I still contend that parents go overboard on their first child, and there's nothing wrong with that...as long as you can live with the consequences. I can't begin to count the hours that my cousin spent boiling baby bottles and nipples.  Seriously!  She broke out a huge canning pot every night to boil bottles & nipples.  If I'm not mistaken, most modern dishwashers have a sanitizing feature.  That's good enough for me...

And, why bother killing every germ?  Anyone who's ever walked into a daycare has witnessed that slobber fest in the baby room when everyone is teething.  Babies chew; babies drool; babies gnaw...on everything and everyone.  There's no avoiding it or stopping it.  Kids are going to get sick...deal with it!  Think of it this way...expose them to germs when their little and they'll have cast iron immune systems by the time they hit kindergarten.  Remember, it wasn't so long ago that our parents hosted "Chicken Pox Parties," hoping for us to catch it and be done with it.  No one locked up our parents for that one.

As for my cousin, by the time the second child came along, she was over her germ issues.  No, germs were no longer the problem...drinks were.  Milk and water only...no juice!  Juice is the enemy...smh.  That's a topic for another day...