Hygienic Insanity

Caution: Touching life may be damaging to your child's health.

We were on a local farm over the weekend and they had a section where kids (both large and small) could go and see the farm animals. Not touch, you understand, just see. It was most definitely was NOT a petting section. There were signs asking you not to touch the animals and dispensers of handwash everywhere so you could sanitize yourself immediately if you felt any countrysde had touched you. What tipped this over the edge into the realms of insanity was the fact that all the animal enclosures were double fenced so you couldn't physically get within 3 feet of any animal, and they still had handwash dispensers right there by the fence.

Please wash your hands after touching life

I realise the E.coli outbreak at Godstone's Farm (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10311808) caused a lot of heartache, but this is going over the top. What kind of children are we going to raise? If children are never exposed to germs, they never build up any resistance to them. I'm not suggesting being stupid about this, but a little bit of common sense and handwashing goes a long way. I'm not blaming the farm for this insanity - undoubtedly they are worried about being sued if anyone falls ill after a visit.

When we're out walking the dogs we get a lot of parents & children asking if they can stroke the dogs. Perhaps we should start carrying Health & Safety disclaimers and ask people to sign them before allowing them to stroke the dogs .... or not. We'll let a little sanity and dog stroking exist in our corner of the world :-)

Interestingly, you can clinically prove that children raised with pets are two things. 1) Healthier and; 2) more mentally stable than children who are not. I suspect they're they're also happier, but that one's a personal opinion. The healthier is very simply - they get exposed to more bugs through their interactions with their pets and that makes their immune systems more robust and better able to repel the nasty bugs. The mentally stable is also easy. Firstly pets give you unconditional love with no strings attached, secondly if you tell your dog a secret in strictest confidence, it will most definitely NOT go and tell every other dog in the class (sadly people are not so reliable).

Caution: NOT stroking dogs may be damaging to your child's health :-)