Background information
Gardening with children: The basics of sowing seeds
by Ann-Kathrin Schäfer
What’s a bit of dirt?
20.7.2018
Translation: Eva Francis
Should you worry if your daughter eats a handful of sand? Do baby bottles always have to be sterilised before you use them? Can you pop their dummy back in their mouth when it falls on the floor? Believe it or not, keeping children’s lives sterile isn’t just unnecessary, it can even be harmful.
There are more microbes in the world than stars in the sky. Some of them are pretty nasty, and they can make us ill. They have already cost vast numbers of people their lives. But in this part of the world we’re fortunate in that very few people die of contagious diseases these days.
Even still, a lot of parents still look on with mixed feelings when their child shoves their playmate’s plastic shovel in their mouth. Or when their little one gets splattered from head to toe in mud when they’re in the woods. Or when they give the neighbour’s dog a kiss on their furry coat.
According to Brett Finlay, microbiology professor at The University of British Columbia in Canada, creating a sterile environment for children isn’t just unnecessary, it can sometimes also be damaging. His reasoning is that the majority of microbes are there to keep us healthy. That’s something he explains in the book «Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World!», which he co-wrote with microbiologist Marie-Claire Arrieta.
Good bacteria is more than just bifidus
But what do we even mean by microbes? They’re organisms like bacteria, viruses and funguses that you only see under the microscope. They can survive almost anywhere but their favourite place is the human gut. Everyone has their own set of microbes living on and in them that we call the microbiome. This is different for everyone but generally speaking what affects the microbiome you have is how you live and eat.
The fact that there is good as well as bad bacteria isn’t something groundbreaking for experts. For the most part, they know that they help with constipation – think of bifidus in yoghurt – and that they produce certain vitamins for us.
But microbes can do much more than that. They also fight harmful bacteria and help to develop the immune system by carrying out a kind of practice run for the worst case scenario. If our bodies don’t get this early training, the immune system risks overreacting later on and causing something like asthma, allergies or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Microbes: nature’s gift to newborns
These days, babies and small children tend to have too few rather than too many microbes. This boils down to two main factors: the increased use of antibiotics and the rise in caesarean sections. Our diet is also more unbalanced and lower in fibre than it used to be. Not only that, today’s generation of children don’t spend as much time outdoors where they’d normally come into contact with all sorts of plants, creepie crawlies and dirt.
It’s especially important that a child is exposed to enough microbes in their first few months. That starts from birth, as Finlay and Arrieta explain in their book. When the baby is in the mother’s stomach it is still fairly sterile. Through a natural birth, they get a load of helpful microorganisms.
These come from the mother’s vaginal secretions and even her stool. They help the baby to digest breast milk, protect them from infections and promote their immune system development. If the baby doesn’t get nature’s own special «vaccination», there is a much higher risk of the child later becoming overweight or developing asthma, allergies, Coeliac disease or even autism.
Ever-present antibiotics
We have the discovery of antibiotics to thank for the fact that children in Switzerland no longer die of pneumonia or other infectious diseases. While the occurrence of these kinds of illnesses has significantly declined, other diseases such as diabetes and cancer occur much more often and a lot earlier in life. This is another place where microbes play a big part.
Consider this: the purpose of antibiotics is to kill as many microbes as possible, even some that don’t have anything to do with the illness being treated. While antibiotics only alter an adult’s microbiome over the short term, they can have far-reaching effects on pregnant women and babies. Finlay compares it to «when a lush rainforest gets chopped down, and only a few dominant species make a comeback».
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use antibiotics. It just means we ought to use them as a last resort and not prescribe them for any old viral infection, like a sore throat, a cough or a cold. According to Finlay, there’s barely anything else that interferes more with a child’s developing microbiome than antibiotics. He even stresses that antibiotics could potentially cause long-term immune system damage.
So how clean should a child’s environment be?
When kids are a bit older, two elements are key for maintaining good microbes in the body: eating healthily (a diet high in vegetables and fibre and low in white flour, sugar and fat) and not going overboard with cleanliness.
But what does that even mean?! Where do we still need to keep a watchful eye for bad bacteria?
Washing little hands
According to Finlay and Arrieta, hand washing is without doubt the best way to ward off infections. But it’s usually enough to limit kids’ hand washing to before meals, after going to the loo and after being in contact with someone who is ill. All you need is water and soap – you want to avoid antibacterial soap and disinfectant.
Good dirt and bad dirt
Of course you want to teach your kids not to crawl on the floor in the tram or to lick the handrail. Just because your kids are holding onto something that lots of other people have touched isn’t a reason to whip out the antibacterial gel. They can wash their hands at home before they eat, and that’s plenty.
As far as playtime is concerned, when kids are outside they’re not at risk of getting infected with dangerous microbes unless they go near animal droppings. Similarly, kids should be allowed to play in sandpits – as long as all the cats in the neighbourhood haven’t nominated it their place to commune with nature.
Sterile bottles?
If the tap water at hand isn’t suitable for drinking, you’ll want to sterilise the baby’s bottles by boiling them in water or sticking them in the dishwasher at a high temperature setting. Otherwise you can go ahead and give them the same treatment as dummies and teething rings: clean them with water and washing-up liquid.
Except there is one extra thing you’ll need for cleaning bottles, and that’s a bottle brush. That will help to remove the remains of milk, which can become a breeding ground for bacteria.
Cleaning day for kids’ toys?
As long as their toys don’t look dirty and no ill children have played with them, you don’t need to wash them or scrub them clean. When you do think they’re grubby, a bit of soap and water will remove the dirt in a jiffy. There’s no need to use harsh chemicals.
Dummies – from the ground straight back into their mouth?
A question on every parent’s lips is: can you really just give a child back their dummy when it falls onto the ground? If this happens on the bus or in the shops, Finlay recommends giving it a quick clean with soap and water. But if it drops while you’re at home or out in the woods, it’s enough to just wipe off any dirt you see.
Side note: If there’s no water or soap at hand, the parent can put the dummy in their own mouth as a way of cleaning it. Provided you don’t have tooth decay, there’s no need to worry about passing any bacteria onto your child.
Giving fruit a rinse under the tap?
You always want to wash fruit and vegetables, especially when you’re eating them raw. This includes organic produce. Even though organic food usually has less pesticide residue they can still carry dangerous germs – just think of the dung farmers often use as manure.
Header image: Dirt isn't evil: Children like to play in the mud and that's a good thing.
A passionate journalist and mother of two sons who moved from Zurich to Lisbon with her husband in 2014. Does her writing in cafés and appreciates that life has been treating her well in general. <br><a href="http://uemityoker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">uemityoker.wordpress.com</a>
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