Winter is Here!

Healthy Habits for Your Family

Enlist your children in the fight against germs
Does it seem like your little one is always running around with a runny nose? Or a sore throat? Or a bad cough? There's a simple reason why. Kids love to hang out (and touch, and share toys) with other kids — other kids with runny noses, sore throats, and coughs. This close contact allows germs to pass back and forth from one child to another (no backs, no takes, finder's keeper's). What's more, kids use their hands to explore their world (not to mention explore their noses). And babies go one step further, using their mouths to explore just as much as their hands (one study found that babies perform the mouth-to-object maneuver more than 80 times per hour). Since hand-to-mouth transmission is a virus' favorite way of getting around, it's no wonder germs are having a field day with your children.

So what's a concerned mother or father to do? Following your child around with a disinfecting wipe 24/7 obviously isn't practical (kids move too fast) — and could definitely cramp his or her style… and yours. A more sensible approach and a more effective one: Enlist your offspring in the fight against germs. Here are some tips how:
Passing along the clean gene: Teach your little ones the association between germs and the icky sick feeling they don't like, and they'll start to understand the benefits of cleaning up their acts (and washing their hands). Teach your kids to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom, after they come in from playing, before and after they eat, after they've been in contact with an animal, and after they've sneezed or coughed. Instead of telling children to sneeze or cough into their hands (hands they'll promptly use to pass along the germs they just expelled), teach them to use the inside of their elbow. Or better yet, hand them a tissue to use. And teach kids to toss tissues after each use — and then to wash their hands before touching anything, or anyone.

Happy hand-washing: Your kids might think a two-second hand wash is enough to send those germs down the drain, but a really thorough hand cleaning requires a solid 20 seconds of rub-a-dub-dubbing. Sound impossible to get your little one to commit 20 seconds to washing up? Not if the scrubbing is good clean fun. To make hand washing fun — and effective — have your child sing "Happy Birthday" or the ABC song two times (three times if he or she is a fast singer) while washing his or her hands. Once the renditions end, so can the hand washing. A game of "I'll wash your hands, you wash mine" will make washing more fun for both of you.

Fighting the flu: Flu's in season every year – from about October through April. And during each flu season, about 10 percent of the population in this country catches this virus — adding up to a whole lot of runny noses, achy muscles, fever, lethargy, and sore throats. For most flu sufferers, the flu is annoying, uncomfortable, and possibly inconvenient — they'll be miserable for a week or two, and miss at least a few days of work or school. For those whose immune systems are still developing (aka children) or who are immunocompromised (the elderly; someone who is already ill), a case of the flu can be a lot more serious.

Luckily, there are ways to help avoid catching the flu in the first place, and there are ways to reduce the risk of spreading the flu virus if one member of the family has already caught it. To help control the flu virus, get the flu shot. The flu vaccine is approved for infants over 6 months, and new CDC guidelines recommend that all children up to age 5 (and all their household contacts including siblings, parents, babysitters, etc.) get the flu shot, as well as those at high risk of complications from the flu (such as pregnant women or those with depressed immune systems or asthma, for example). To help reduce the risk of spreading the flu virus, use disinfecting wipes on such often-touched surfaces as bathroom and kitchen countertops, doorknobs, telephones, computer keyboards, toys, tables, and so on.

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