Some experts believe that fanatical hygiene is only harmful to the health of the child. And dirt within reasonable limits will benefit the immune system.
Cleanliness is the key to health. We absorbed this truth, as well as the fairy tale about Moidodyr, with our mother’s milk, strawberry soap and quack shampoo. Not washing your hands before eating is a crime against grandmothers. Not taking a shower before bed is generally a firing squad. But what does modern pediatrics think about this?
“Children’s immune systems will benefit from dirt,” says Michael Welch, Ph.D., head of the Allergy and Immunology Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics. – Thanks to the dirt, the immune system will learn to fight off viruses, bacteria and microbes.
Dr. John Mersh, a pediatrician from California, agrees with his colleague. He generally believes that the child does not need a daily bath until he starts crawling on the floor. The main dirt will be in diapers and diapers.
– You already wash his ass, genitals, face and neck when the baby spits up, – says the specialist. – And a daily bath will dry the baby’s skin. This can lead to the development of dermatitis or eczema. Especially if you use soap or shower gels when bathing.
Total: babies are offered to bathe no more than once every 10 days. The rest of the time, wash or wipe with a damp sponge. For preschoolers and younger students, the norm is called a couple of times a week. But adolescents, especially during puberty, need to wash every day. The main thing is that your child understands this himself.
We already see how the older generation faints. No, everything is clear and logical: an organism, accustomed to sterility, really can hardly resist an unfamiliar infection. But maybe we can do without extremes?
The guru of Russian young mothers, the famous TV doctor Yevgeny Komarovsky, does not adhere to such radical views. In his opinion, the sun, air and water – well, you know.
You can and should bathe your child every day. A bath is a moisturizing of the skin, which dries out more often because there is a load on the sweat glands. Moreover, from the point of view of hardening, swimming every day, gradually lowering the water temperature, is very good. But don’t confuse bathing with washing. You can wash your baby only once every 1-2 weeks and only with special baby products.
Dr. Komarovsky suggests building relationships with water according to the following scheme: a shower in the morning, a bath twice a week, and regular hardening procedures.
Это важно!
If it comes to that, then children can swim with chickenpox and otitis media. Only in the first case, it is important not to use a washcloth and not to rub the skin with a towel. And in the second, the main thing is not to dive and make sure that there is normal air in the bathroom, optimally the same as in other rooms.
For hygienic reasons, it is advisable to bathe a sick child, but it is not a bath that is optimal, but a shower – to wash off the sweat, clean it up. It is better not to bathe at a body temperature above 37,5 degrees: the water has a very high heat transfer. The well-being of the child is much more important. If bronchitis, pneumonia, otitis media, whatever, and the child feels bad at the same time – lethargic, capricious, fever, no appetite, there is nothing to fool yourself with bathing. But if the child is cheerful, the temperature has returned to normal, the appetite has appeared – bathe in health. If you do not swim with a cold with a satisfactory general condition, you may not see water at all.