I have been thinking about this post for a few days, and uhmed and ahed about weather or not to write it. Its a tricky subject. But its one i have strong opinions on (note the use of the word OPINION here) and I finally decided to share them.
You have all seen those kids wrapped in cotton wool right? The ones whose parents have made a spotless environment for their kids to live in, with no germs ANYWHERE and the childproofing is still on all the doors and windows, cupboards and the toilet even though their kids have been using the toilet for several years now. (just ask permission dear)...
My opinion of these parents is on several levels, my first thoughts are one day their kids must go out into the world and find out its a scary place with germs everywhere and holes in the ground they might trip on and toilets that you can just open up and use. My second thought is that they must be exhausted from both managing to maintain that consistency of spotlessness and from the abject terror they must have of their kids coming into contact with all these risks they have worked so hard to protect their children from. And I also feel sorry for the kids, who have no notion of their own limits and skills, and lets face it, no immune system.
Now I'm no scientist or doctor, but I have done a fair amount of reading articles WRITTEN by scientists and doctors, and the consensus seems to be as follows: you create immunity from interacting with germs, and you create antibodies to everything you come into contact with. You have immunity to chocolate, apples, meat, sand, dirt, airborne things like germs, and you have immunity to illness. You don't get immunity from never being exposed to these things, in fact, by never being exposed to these things we have no immunity to them so when we do become exposed to them we are more likely to develop an allergy from our immune system working overtime to deal with the new "threat" (that's of course not the only way allergy's develop).
Now I get that some children have medical conditions such as mass allergy or low immune system or whatever that means their parents MUST maintain this environment. By if your child doesn't then in my opinion, let them play!
Something else I know is that for the first one to two years of exposure to the real world, your kids will get sick, a lot. And because a lot of the illness they catch will be things that you have never been in contact with (what they call mutations and new viruses) you will get it too. In fact it could go straight through the whole family. That's normal. Its good in fact, because then that's one more thing you have all built up immunity to. Now if you heavily protect your child from all possible contact with germs then they will start getting sick at school, and miss a fair bit. I don't know if it will be worse if you wait till then because I never waited that long, all my kids faced the big scary world of germs before they turned one. And started getting sick. A lot. In fact my twins have some kind of virus right now that has given them both a snotty nose. I believe that their good stong immune systems that have been getting lots of exercise since they were ten months old has kept it that way, and I also believe that if they had just started kindy last month they would be sick, but I wouldn't call them sick, I am just wiping their noses off a fair bit.
Another part of cotton wooling I highly disagree with is protection from "meanness". Like as soon as you see a kid on the playground giving your precious baby a hard time you are in their like a shot to "save" them. I can't stand that. In my opinion, that's setting your kids up for major bullying at school, because, in case you hadn't realised, you will not be present on the school playground to rescue them from the other kids, and they will be so used to being rescued they will have no clue how to handle it. So they will just cry. Or worse, tell the teacher (which has its place) but eventually they will run out of teachers, and remember what we all thought of the "tattle-tale kids" at school? And remember how we treated them? Kids are cruel, they can belittle the crap out of anyone who lets them, and if your kids have no clue how to protect themselves, then they WILL let them.
The part of cotton wooling I do agree with is that I want my children to know that the safest place on earth for them is home. My kids can come to me with ANYTHING and I will listen and support as best I can. As kids they can tell me all about the mean kids at school and I will wrap them in my arms and we can talk about how to handle that when they go back out their again. When I face teenage hood, I intend to at times buy them alcahol so that I know what they are drinking, how much, and where, at least SOME of the time. If one of my girls comes home pregnant, I (sincerely hope) will freak out at some point that they don't see me do it, because they are safe to bring me that in their home. Drug addiction, same thing. If I do my job right, my main feeling on any of that will be gratefulness that they feel SAFE to come to me knowing I love and support them no matter what.
And on a lighter note, when we play monopoly if someone is low on funds the bank will give them a few million dollars as a gift, and if they can't afford to pay the rent of the spot they land on they can sleep there for free that night. We avoid "whos the winner, whos the loser" during games because to me its about having a fun family night. Competition has no place in my home, they can learn about that at school. And we dance stupid dances in the living room with crazy moves, play silly voice games around the dinner table, and my husband and I try to "whip" each other with the tea towels when we do the dishes. Because laughter is a really important part of our home life.
So my conclusion is, cotton wooling their feelings at home is vital, cotton wooling your children from the big bad world is like performing emotional suicide on their behalf. harsh words I know, but that is my honest to goodness opinion. Children that walk out of their incredible safe home world with no idea of what it is really like out there are going to fall flat on their face, and it could be years, if ever, before they learn how to handle that.
Now I would like you to remember that I carefully used the word OPINIONS at the beginning of this blog post. This is all my personal opinions, and how I choose to raise my kids, to the best of my ability. You choose your way.
xx The Ramblings of Another Mother.
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