Today this 'let your kids eat dirt philosophy' holds true in our household. The 'five second' rule is more like the 'if it didn't land in a pile of something gross, it's okay to eat' rule. I have a turn in policy, if a child finds a piece of candy, he is allowed to 'turn it in' for a fresh piece. I have to give them something for being honest and not shoving the piece of I-not-sure-what-in-the-world-type-of-dried-up-I-believe-candy straight into their mouths, but if it was simply a little dirty, big deal. You will not find me hand sanitizing my hand sanitizer bottle. (Contrary to the above though, I do not let me children play with dirt they found in the middle of the street or let them try to find strangers to trade-in their candy to.)
This weekend we had what my husband dubbed 'the redneck water park'. (Please take no offense any rednecks that may be reading, this is a compliment to your ingenuity.) Our play set slide had a hose running down it with the slide landing inside our inflatable pool. We had not one, but two sprinklers running at one time and of course, the infamous slip-n-slide was flanking the outside of our makeshift park. With all of this going on around them, you know where all the children were (not only mine), at the mud puddle created from this water festivus.
I really do let my kids eat dirt.
(perhaps Wyatt took it too literally)
50 comments:
Cute pictures! I hear what you are saying, but I'm beyond hope. I try to avoid letting my kids eat dirt, but they can certainly play in it.
I never thought of sanitizing the hand-sanitizer bottle though - ahhh one more thing for me to obsess about. ;)
Our son eats dust bunnies. Does that count?
Wyatt is so cute! All my kids love to spread mud all over them--such fun to clean ;)
Your water park sounds like a blast! Can I drop off my kids?!
Ha! I knew Missy would have something good to say and I had a feeling it would be about the hand sanitizer! ;-)
I am in the same boat as you. Graycen can lay on the ground, play in the dirt, she has eaten sand a couple of times, eats things off the floor when they have fallen. Kids will be kids and that's what they do!
Oh I am with you Sister.
I leave our windows open as much as I can to keep it 'filled with nature'. I know there are real allergies out there and such. But don't you think maybe our airtight homes are too sanitary?
I love your babies' dirt picture.
Can I use it in my weekend seen a good thing post?
PS.
I hate hate hate hand sanitizer.
Except when I am on a very small plane and there is not a water station in the commode. Then I love love love hand sanitizer.
oh well.
My favorite is the "trade-in" policy for candy found on the floor. I will never forget the first time I saw Henry quietly pick up a piece of candy off the floor and walk directly to you for his "trade-in" brand-new piece of candy. What a system :)
I'm in total agreement with you. All of these super germs out there now are because of our germaphobic ways.
As for my duaghter, the dirtier and germier she gets, the better!
Oh those pictures are the best!
I remember my grandma would always talk about this family that lived down the street from her while she was raising her family. The mom was a germ freak & was always washing the kids hands & wouldn't let them play with the other kids etc... & they were ALWAYS sick. According to my gram anwway. I always remembered that "cautionary" tale. (:
I'm right there with you on the 5 second rule. But I never had an exchange policy, I'll have to get one of those.
I attended a wedding this year where at the end of the welcoming line you not only got to shake hands with the Father of the Groom but you also got a spritz of hand sanitiser, I could help thinking the world was out of control.
I fondly recall feeding animals at both the farm and zoo as a child and then feasting heavily on a picnic without an intermediate hand scrubbing and I survived. Sheep spit and all.
Yay for dirt eating!!! We do lots of that here too :-) And I love the redneck water park - VERY fun . . . any reference to festivus just makes my heart twinge for a little Seinfeld :-) It's been too long! No hand sanitizer here either . . . just plain old non-bacterial soap and water for us.
I LOVE this post! I'm so glad you stopped by my blog today, so I could come find you! Your life sounds very interesting, and I'm looking forward to learning more about you. Hope you'll come back to visit me too!
yummy :)
seriously - too flippin cute!!
happy POW :)
Cute stuff!
I teach daycare and I fully believe that the kids are sick more often because of how often we make them wash their hands! Our skin has natural oils that are there to protect us from invading germs and we are constantly washing it away making ourselves more vulnerable.
People are so goofy!
I get serious dirty looks (yep, that's a pun) when I let my Peanut run rampant in the filthy outdoors. What can you do? Glad I'm not the only one.
Love the blog, can't wait to read more!
My youngest ate dirt today. No lie. Dirty dirt from a puddle of rain water.
Ewww!!
happy POW!
Teeheee... we totally have a 5 second rule too!
Adorable and hilarious and all totally true. I'm so glad I found this post through POW!
Those are some awesome pictures!!
And I totally agree. While I hand sanitize after the mall play area, they really do need exposed!
Cute post, and so great to "meet" you. Thanks for dropping by my little corner of the world! :)
They did a study on the five second rule and it's OK! There's really not that many germs. I modify the rule slightly too. If it is a "wet" food (like fruit or something) it gets tossed. If it's a "dry" food it can be eaten. Makes no rational sense, but neither do most of the rest of my decisions...
Glad you stopped by. You are one funny antisupermommy! If it makes you feel any better, my daughter likes to drink bath water.
mmmm, love me some dirt!
Bwaaahaahaa!!! HIlarious!
I tried doing that hose-down-the-slide thing last summer. It was when my oldest started his "Naked Gardening" phase, and I had the kiddie pool at the bottom of the slide with the hose water running down. That naked butt shot off the slick slide like a bullet out of a gun. I really underestimated the speed he would pick up.
We don't do that anymore. :)
Good morning! I'm visiting from SITS. Love the pictures and YEAH for eating dirt!
I think you have a really refreshing outlook. I don't have children (I'm only 21) but I was raised without all the over-sanitation and left to my own devices. Now I have an immune system like Fort Knox and a very sturdy (albeit many small scars) body. Parents today don't really understand how dangerous over-sanitation is and the affects it can have on the long term life of their child. Thank you for helping to spread the word
Hooray for you!
Uncle Stupid says, "Hi".
Isn't there a saying, "You've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die"? I don't know if that means eating more than a peck will kill you, or if you're obliged to eat that much or you won't be allowed through the Pearly Gates. Either way, it would seem an awful lot of dirt eating is in order.
Yeah - my mom always encouraged us to eat food off the floor if we dropped something. She figured it built up our antibodies. My husband, on the other hand was raised by a germ freak, he shakes with fear when ever I pick something up off the floor and pop it in my mouth, you know, like an olive that has rolled off the table, that sort of thing. Sometimes, I place an olive on the floor and then eat it just to bug him.
Check out "Faith, Madness and Spontaneous Human Combustion" by immunologist Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D.
Eating dirt is one of the most important things children can do...
My kid ate dirt for a few years, no matter how hard I tried to stop him. He ended up with some exotic tropical worms that needs a pediatric specialist to kill. A word to the wise.
He had pinworms, for years, but at least there is over the counter meds for that.
Geez, Elisabeth, you sure know how to kill the buzz.
Hi, from Uncle Stupid.
Good for you! At 77 years, I'm a poster "boy" for filth. The immunity acquired by natural means will serve those rug rats well in the future. Keep up the good work.
Cecil Moon
My mother-in-law, who was so fastidious as to annually clean the exterior of her house with a toothbrush, said you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.
Now I understand that Congress is looking to ration that down to 3 tablespoons for those making over $250,000 a year, so perhaps you should put some dirt aside for later. Just don't tell anyone you're hoarding.
On an unrelated note, my 6 month old Irish-Puerto Rican (a scary lineage, no?)grand-daughter had her checkup today. She's in the 26th percentile for height and 90th percentile for head size, making her the tiniest wise Latina.
I have seen the daughter of one of my friends eat dead flies from the daycare windowsill AND a piece of dried dog poo (much shrieking from her mom on witnessing this). Nineteen years later, it still makes me shudder to think of it; but I must note, she has led a remarkably disease-free life.
One day my niece was staying at her grandparent's house. She was about a year and a half old and in the play pen. My wife walked into the house and asked who had given the baby chocolate and let her smear it all around her mouth. Only it wasn't chocolate. And it wasn't dirt either.
5-second rule turns to 10-second rule when you're unemployed, and whatever doesn't kill you make you stronger. Go dirt.
My stepdaughter is trying to raise her baby as a Girl in a Bubble, protecting her from all germs. They're coming for a visit in two days. The house is not, ahem, germ free. And various family friends want to see and possibly touch the baby. I hope they will not be required to produce medical certificates.
Hey do you really know Iowahawk? he's famous in parts...
Marc in Calgary.
note, the mud here has rocks in it... ya gotta cut back after your teeth come in.
As a baby, my younger daughter would stick anything she found on the floor in her mouth. Dust bunny, blob of cat hair, whatever. When she was about two, we attended a "Scottish highlands" festival, replete with sheap shearing, stone soup, bagipers, men in kilts and Scottish dancers. While we were sitting in the lovely pasture on a blanket, eating our bread and cheese, we suddenly noticed she had a blob of what looked like grassy mud in her hand, and the other half in her mouth.
Yep. Sheep poop. We have busted her chops about that ever since. She ate sheep poop.
She lived.
This is why we have all these food allergies these days. People are hyper-sanitizing their children at an age when nature intended them to be crawling around on the ground eating bugs. Their immune systems have no chance to develop! (To be fair, a few no doubt ate the wrong bug and dropped out of the gene pool. Nature is heartless that way.)
I still have etched in my memory a picture of myself and three of my brothers sitting on the porch of our house--filthy from head to toe and smiling (glowing, really). We washed our hands before eating at the table or after a #2, but that was about it. And, in my house, when the kids drop food on the floor, I subscribe the same rule: if it doesn't land in a pile of something gross, it's fine. I guess I make an exception for stuff like ice cream and spaghetti, but common sense has to intervene sometimes (even in my house). Even as a teenager, I loved playing in the mud, walking through the fields near our house with bare feet. As long as I hosed myself off before stepping into the house, I was okay.
Hilarious and great photos! On a recent trip to the park my son decided he would take your uncle's advice and have himself just about EVERY nasty thing he could find.
My grandfather ate dirt every day of his life and lived to be 137 years old!
SNL character 'the anal-retentive chef' featuring the late phil hartman was funny
he'd wrap his garbage up and place it in the trash making sure it didn't touch any of the other garbage
too funny
I love this post! Your kids are absolutely adorable ;)
Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest!!
I follow your blog anyway but saw your link on SITS to this post and think it is hilarious. The photos are fab!! I too "let my kids eat dirt" and am happy to say (touch wood) that they are hardly ever ill and if they are its only ever 24-48hrs at a time. I put it down to have a good immune system due to all the dust bunnies in my house!!!
I'm with you. My kids have eaten sand, things from the floor, and have survived. Today's kids have their immune system all wacked up, because we don't expose them to ANYTHING.
Awww this is just so cute! I was one of those moms that freaked out and threw anything away that landed on the floor...then I had my third baby and I mellowed out. Now I am the same as you, as long as it isn't covered in dog hair or something gross they can eat it off the floor, lol!
I'm still weird about eating dirt though, but that is because I have dogs and you know what they do all over my backyard...eww!
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