KIDS will be banned from blowing out candles on communal birthday cakes, under strict new hygiene rules for childcare.
But doctors warn the latest National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines go too far in “bubble-wrapping” children.
The NHMRC is urging childcare centres to stand up to parents who insist on sending a sick child to daycare – even if they have a medical certificate. And daycare staff will now have to wash toys, doorknobs, floors and cushion covers every day.
The new guidelines state children who want to blow out a candle on their birthday should bring their very own cupcake – to avoid blowing germs all over a shared cake.
Busybodies have too much time on the their hands – and too much government money.
Maybe we should ban birthdays too. Lowers the self esteem of the non-birthday children!
Judith Sloan
6 Feb 13 at 9:15 am
Vanity, vanity, all his vanity, sayeth the Preacher, there is nothing new under sun and what-not
The ban on birthday cakes was issued by the NHMRC in 2006 under the personal diktat of John “Nannycrat” Howard
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/ch43.pdf – page 24
Indeed the new guidelines do state what the Daily Telegraph claims, but then so did the guidelines before the new guidelines, and even the guidelines before those guidelines. Not really surprising that it took News Limited 7 years to catch up.
Grey
6 Feb 13 at 9:20 am
It’s a stupid rule and it ought to be ignored regardless of who came up with it.
.
6 Feb 13 at 9:41 am
A left-wing public servant came up with it.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 9:43 am
True, Grey. The 5th edition is almost verbatim to the 4th edition and yet it is being touted by Plebeserk and Ellis as “new” when it’s just a rehash. Although I get the impression it is now no longer merely a guideline…
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 9:46 am
Those tractor factories won’t run themselves you know.
creche
Pickles
6 Feb 13 at 9:47 am
I don’t think the government has a moral right to be involved but I think it a truly disgusting practice especially as I attend a lot of these parties and see two-year-olds spitting snot over a cake.
Dan
6 Feb 13 at 9:51 am
Reminds me of the posters that appeared in the toilets at my old public service job during the great swine flu hoax – instructions on how to wash your hands! People joke about the nanny state telling you how to wipe your arse but that probably won’t be too far away.
Plato Sandilands
6 Feb 13 at 9:55 am
Hewson has become a nanny-statist, so he would be happy in more than one respect.
Andrew
6 Feb 13 at 9:55 am
I’ve worked at places where people needed instructions to point their arse towards the toilet bowl when having a crap.
Craig Mc
6 Feb 13 at 10:03 am
Unfortunately for the rest of us, there are people echoing your sentiment who are prepared to take their ‘disgust’ further up the nanny chain and lumber everyone with such absurdities.
lotocoti
6 Feb 13 at 10:08 am
Get over it Sinclair, this is all as predicted in Gary Becker’s demand for the quantity and quality of children.
As the size of families fall, parents spend more time doting over the one or two children they have.
Many aspects of life are treated with more care than in our childhoods because the demand for health and safety are superior goods.
As incomes rise, the willing of adults to risk drinking and driving falls as has the willingness to let children take risks. Richer is safer. Wealthier is healthier.
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 10:36 am
They had those “How to Have a Crap” Posters on the wall when I first got to this Clinic.
Needless to say, they are now little bits of Carbonicles floating in the wind…
Winston SMITH
6 Feb 13 at 10:37 am
It’s more an aesthetic reaction than a serious medical one and needs to be called as such.
Do we stop little kids huggin’ and kissin’ each other as they are wont to do? It’s all da same germs, as Da Hairy Ape righly tells me about my aesthetically unshared drink bottle.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
6 Feb 13 at 10:38 am
Well an infection spread in your kid’s child care centre spreads and they’re sick, and parents naturally take time off work to care for them – all problematic in various ways.
so perhaps not such a bad idea.
candy
6 Feb 13 at 10:42 am
That’s right, anyone who’s looked around a group of kids will see the germs are already pretty well shared. After all, they spread lice pretty quick and that requires hair in contact.
Yesterday I heard of a parent in our school expecting notification of threadworms. Sheesh.
Pedro
6 Feb 13 at 10:46 am
Back in the olds days, kids being exposed to germs was thought to strengthen the immune system.
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 10:46 am
Lets face it, if a sick kid goes to daycare, the other kids catch the illness. Same with school. It is not blowing out candles on a cake that causes it, it is contact between the kids, and contact via surfaces.
The trouble is it is not always obvious that a child is sick. My daughter looks to be right as rain in the morning but by lunch has a raging temperature and I have to pick her up from school. She has always been the same. It is usually tonsilitis, and it comes on suddenly and severely and is infectious. She gets it from somewhere, and that somewhere is school, and there are usually no birthday cakes in sight.
I believe that wiping down surfaces ie tables, toilets, door knobs etc daily is a good thing. But the whole building doesnt need doing over unless there is gastro or something going through the kids.
dianeh
6 Feb 13 at 10:48 am
Today’s children need more germs, more dirt, more scratches and more rough-housing. I wonder if even some parents nowadays know what a gravel rash is.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
I read somewhere thatallegies are much less in east germany as compared to west germany because the east was a tougher upbringing.
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 10:51 am
Anyone remotely familiar with childcare will note the extraordinary amount of allergies getting around these days. I don’t know if this is better awareness and reporting but it seems like most kids are allergic to something
I’ve always worked on the bush doctor theory that these kids haven’t been exposed to enough dirt, but I’m sure a study somewhere disproves my theory.
brc
6 Feb 13 at 10:54 am
BTW, my daughter suffered congenital health problems as a baby/toddler and often had breathing difficulties. We were advised to never put her into daycare, and to watch her carefully at pre-school. She was high risk due to her illness. We had enough sleepless nights and visits to Emergency as it was, without the bugs running around daycare. She is a lot stronger and less susceptible now but we still have to be vigilant.
If the idea is to make daycare safer for kids like mine, then the govt is wasting its time. Healthy kids will survive the childhood illnesses from daycare, regardless of spit on birthday cakes or not.
dianeh
6 Feb 13 at 10:55 am
When the rule that children must wear hats in the playground was introduced, my sister, who is a teacher, told me of a standoff with the parents of one child. he had to stay inside as a result.
The parents were recent migrants, money was tight, and they thought the hat was a waste of money for their child. They had migrated from Nigeria.
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 10:55 am
when my nephew visited a school for a talk as the local police constable, he had to sit at the other end of the room because he ate peanut butter with his breakfast
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 10:59 am
It’s just bloody embarrassing that the Federal government interferes at this level… I mean, FFS.
Fleeced
6 Feb 13 at 11:00 am
But is there any proof that bubble-wrapping our children and coating them in anti-bacterial gel every 10 minutes is actually improving their collective health?
We’re seeing “epidemics” of diseases in children that just weren’t huge issues when I was young, for instance. I didn’t know a single child on anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, tranquilizers, or speed; there were exactly three children with asthma in my school; two fatty boom-bahs; none with fatal peanut allergies (one girl had a thing where strawberries made her break out into a rash, but); there was one autistic child in our neighborhood…
So is there quantitative empirical evidence that today’s cohort of, say, 1 to 10 year olds are healthier (physically & mentally) than Gen-Xers were when we were 1 to 10?
Or is it just the vibe of the thing?
sdog
6 Feb 13 at 11:01 am
Mothers used to have their kids “visit” other kids who had chicken-pox. Would that be child abuse now?
Craig Mc
6 Feb 13 at 11:03 am
I’m surprised PB hasn’t been banned altogether.
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 11:05 am
God, I’m glad I wasn’t ‘cared’ for in the Goo-ga Archipelago. We were at home riding bikes, building stuff made out of dirt, squatting by creeks catching tadpoles, capturing lizards, toad hunting with cricket stumps, brawling, swimming in the ocean, shooting at magpies with gings, go-carting, sailing matchbox boats in the rain-flooded gutters, getting bumped and bruised…
And scoffing Mum’s patty cakes.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 11:12 am
Fleeced
I think it is a national embarrassment there is a “Minister for Families”
WTF? The plebs don’t know how to have a family? The ALP thinks we’re a bunch of retards.
.
6 Feb 13 at 11:15 am
Peh. Patty cakes are for wussies. Mud cakes (dirt + h20 for) are wot Real kids had.
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 11:17 am
I still remember the names of the two high school mates who had a little baby fat.
Rising incomes allows people to both eat more food, survive early childhood and be treated for problems that were previously left untreated and led to suicides.
• How many of your class mates had polio, Hepatitis B, diphtheria, Measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus and other epidemic diseases now forgotten?
• children born in the 1920s had a 10% chance of dying before they were 15.
Charles Murray pointed out that in the good old days, the three Rs were successfully taught because a lot of people unsuited for school dropped out much earlier so they were not included in good old days measures of success. Let today’s schools not report the test results for the children that schools in 1950s did not have to teach
The average years of schooling was 7 or 8 years 50 years ago. See http://www.voxeu.org/article/educational-attainment-world-1950-2010
An average of ten years school was achieved in 1990.
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 11:21 am
You mean like…. this place ?
Tapdog
6 Feb 13 at 11:24 am
It’s to minimise the risk of being sued by someone whose kid catches cold from an infected cake, isn’t it?
I know someone who works as a cook at a nursing homes and though I can’t remember the details it sounded like they have a similar situation there.
TimT
6 Feb 13 at 11:29 am
If you’re like me, you look at the multiple scares all over your body, and the like, and are reminded of the innumerable dangers you survived as a child. Of being hit by cars while riding/ skateboarding, of falling from trees or fences, of pack marking on gravel playgrounds, and so on. And you think of all these with a smile on you face, I certainly do.
dover_beach
6 Feb 13 at 11:30 am
Really?
I’ve worked at places where I wish people had been instructed to point their arse towards the toilet bowl when having a crap.
Leigh Lowe
6 Feb 13 at 11:39 am
“Of being hit by cars while riding/ skateboarding, of falling from trees or fences, of pack marking on gravel playgrounds, and so on. And you think of all these with a smile on you face, I certainly do.”
Unless you’re dead from that accident with the car, in which case you look like crap. Some of the things we used to do were stupid and the kids who died or were maimed suffered. Let’s not get too glossy about the GODs, I think the helicopter parenting has gone too far, but I don’t let my young girls ride their scooters to school unsupervised.
Pedro
6 Feb 13 at 11:44 am
Kids these days suffer from X-Box thumb, not skinned knees and elbows.
I spent half my life covered in Mercurochrome. Which probably explains why I’m as mad as a hatter.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 11:48 am
You go to a 19th century part of the graveyard and check the “catchall” diagnosis for a lot of early childhood deaths as “sunstroke” or similar vague reasons.
Id say the allergies have always been there, but more people survive to pass them on now.
That said the new business premises Im buying is… an ex-childcare center.
The new regs and staffing requirements (particularly a uni qualified person) was what sent them broke. (so the chap says).
Great center though, roof is lead and asbestos!
thefrollickingmole
6 Feb 13 at 11:49 am
I stuck a finger full of peanut butter in my kids mouth the other day just to make sure he wasn’t one of these modern day bubble boys.
All good.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 11:50 am
Thanks for setting us straight, Nicola.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 11:55 am
Good Lord, I had no idea that working conditions at the IPA were so squalid.
Something should be done. I would be happy to provide Tim Wilson with a toilet brush and a set of easy instructions.
Grey
6 Feb 13 at 11:56 am
Pedro, lucky for me, the three cars that hit me managed to wash the majority of their force off by the time I meet them but by God each instance hurt, particularly the accident on my skateboard, where I had the presence of mind to jump before the collision.
dover_beach
6 Feb 13 at 11:58 am
I wasn’t questioning whether vaccines made a quantitative empirical improvement to children’s lives. They do. The science is settled on that one.
My question was, “But is there any proof that bubble-wrapping our children and coating them in anti-bacterial gel every 10 minutes is actually improving their collective health?”. And then I asked, “So is there quantitative empirical evidence that today’s cohort of, say, 1 to 10 year olds are healthier (physically & mentally) than Gen-Xers were when we were 1 to 10?”
So. Is there?
sdog
6 Feb 13 at 12:01 pm
By far and away my worst accident was putting a new front wheel on my bike and only doing the nuts up with my hand. I was going to use a spanner later but forgot. When that wheel comes off you are stuffed. I’ve got the fake teeth to prove it.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 12:04 pm
I have a scar on my ankle from skateboarding. A scar on my arm from falling out of tree. I climbed a 20′ steel ladder that was welded to the outside of a second story building so I could watch planes land at Sydney airport. I should get me an “I survived childhood” badge.
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 12:05 pm
Had them and chicken pox. Discovered I had chicken pox sitting in church.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 12:06 pm
A likely story.
You were cruelly harrassing possums, admit it.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 12:07 pm
But I’m not talking about the 19th century. I’m talking about late 1970s, 1980s. Medical science was certainly advanced enough to determine if a child had died of allergic anaphylaxis. Yet as I said, the only food-allergic kid I knew was a girl who got a rash from strawberries. And thankfully, the entire school district didn’t feel compelled to ban the other several hundred kids from bringing strawberries to school.
sdog
6 Feb 13 at 12:10 pm
You may recall, CL, I started out harassing fish in my early yoofhood. But clearly a slippery slope from there as it lead my to my possum harassment tendencies.
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 12:10 pm
led
Gab
6 Feb 13 at 12:11 pm
It’s always been a major contradiction that child care is so expensive and yet child carers are paid so little.
If 1 carer has 8 kids in their care and they charge $30 a day then they get $240 for that day. $1200 a week for the carer and only $30 a day for the parents! They’ll have some expenses of course, but they shouldn’t have to go so great to turn their $1200 into a pittance.
Harold
6 Feb 13 at 12:13 pm
Aaaah CL. What memories. What pain. What fun!
face ache
6 Feb 13 at 12:14 pm
sdog
No argument its got beyond a joke, but Im just pointing out dying early meant there was a much smaller pool of genes that might carry on a fatal allergy.
My best playmate as a kid was an old sow pig… even when it had farrowed it was happy to let me climb all over it and play with the piglets..
Also managed to fracture my skull along both sides of my head (nearly a flip top head) falling off a truck…
thefrollickingmole
6 Feb 13 at 12:23 pm
A better comparison
• Born in the 1920s: 10% chance of dying before age 15.
• Born in the 1960s: 1% chance of dying before age 15.
Part of this 9% reduction was children cut down in their prime but others would have been children with a frail constitution which now shows up in other illnesses rather than an early childhood death. There are many more premature babies surviving albeit with a frail health ahead of them.
Too many have forgotten the childhood illnesses they survived or never contracted that would have killed in their parents’ generation.
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 12:25 pm
Here’s a plan.
If we want regulate behaviour which endangers childhood health, how about we ban the offspring of hippies who don’t believe in vaccination from childcare and kindergarten. You know the type ….. arts graduates the who become instant immunology professors after 2 hours on the internet looking up some crackpot “anti big Pharma” conspiracy website.
The benefits would be two-fold.
Frstly, it would cut down the spread of communicable diseases and secondly, it would prevent normal kids contracting shitty hippie attitudes.
Leigh Lowe
6 Feb 13 at 12:30 pm
Who’s Hewson ???
dacet street
6 Feb 13 at 12:33 pm
No, that’s not “a better comparison”.
As I’ve stated twice now, I’m interested in GenX vs the current crop of kids. Say, born in 1970 or 1975 vs born in 2000 or 2005. I’ve stated my questions twice, shall I try for third time lucky?
My question was, “But is there any proof that bubble-wrapping our children and coating them in anti-bacterial gel every 10 minutes is actually improving their collective health?”. And then I asked, “So is there quantitative empirical evidence that today’s cohort of, say, 1 to 10 year olds are healthier (physically & mentally) than Gen-Xers were when we were 1 to 10?”
So. Is there?
sdog
6 Feb 13 at 12:37 pm
The correct portfolio title should be “Minister for Clueless and Prolific Procreators”
Leigh Lowe
6 Feb 13 at 12:39 pm
IT, I have a similar story but without the missing teeth. Must have been about 9 y/o when some friends and I learned you could do endoes with the use of one’s foot. Still only a novice I proceeded to attempt one but was going a little too fast and so went arse over t..My friends almost died laughing.
dover_beach
6 Feb 13 at 12:48 pm
You can’t have your cake and blow out the candles too.
Clancy of The Underpass
6 Feb 13 at 12:51 pm
Ironically black Africans are experiencing Vit D deficiency due to this, they have more difficulty absorbing it. The parents are probably right.
Rob
6 Feb 13 at 1:07 pm
Sounds like Charlotte’s Web.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 1:07 pm
Here you go sdog, trending up
http://www.aihw.gov.au/australian-trends-in-life-expectancy/
but that doesn’t fully answer your question as it won’t necessarily capture the incidence of diseases, espec those that do not kill.
Pedro
6 Feb 13 at 1:12 pm
I remember the German Measles Playgroups. Those were the days…
There’s a reason they’re called childhood diseases. You get them as a kid and generally become immune without any great dramas. Get them as an adult, and it’s bad Karma. Like Mumps.
Winston SMITH
6 Feb 13 at 1:18 pm
Council run kinders are like some kind of proving ground for ludicrous political correctness, but there is the occasional pocket of resistance.
Here in the City of Yarra, aka The Most Left Wing Council In The Entire Country (as measured by the number of elected Socialist Party and Greens councillors), one kinder teacher let slip that the Council bureacrats aren’t happy with her because she sits the kids down for lunch at a set time.
Apparently the PC thing to do is something called a ‘progressive lunch’ where you put the kids’ food on a special table and they can go eat it whenever they like. Something to do with accommodating cultural sensitivities…
FMD
papachango
6 Feb 13 at 1:20 pm
Winston- it may be better to have them early in life if you have to have them but you are better off not having them at all, see the natural experiment in measles taking place in east africa now
Rob
6 Feb 13 at 1:35 pm
Yeah, no. “Life expectancy” is a whole different thing. More preemies being kept alive and more geriatrics surviving longer is a great thing, as are better cancer treatments etc. That doesn’t tell me whether fat bubble-wrapped kids today, for all the birthday-cake-bans and triclosan-soakings and peanut-shunning and psychotropic drugging and all, are physically and mentally healthier than GenX kids were. I.e., is all this shit actually helping kids?
Never mind.
sdog
6 Feb 13 at 1:44 pm
Polio, TB, measles, mumps, thank God all much better left far behind us.
candy
6 Feb 13 at 1:47 pm
Kids Exposed to Bacteria Have Stronger Immune Systems.
Very interesting points about smaller families, fewer siblings.
Further:
Also in the news today: one of the country’s most popular contraceptive pills has been withrawn because it causes blot clots – and death.
C.L.
6 Feb 13 at 1:52 pm
Always look for the good news though C.L.
You and JC seem to find the best and worst. You two could write daytime soaps.
The hero has re-entered the family estate after his plane crash and 3 year stint as a Saudi Prince:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_allergy#Oral_desensitization
Until a few years ago, desensitisation for peanuts was at the time impossible.
.
6 Feb 13 at 1:57 pm
Too many skanky illegal immigrant kids?
Chris M
6 Feb 13 at 1:59 pm
“Busybodies have too much time on the their hands – and too much government money.”
I cannot see how such people could possibly be productive in society. Productive people are too busy producing to worry about such wastes of time.
The Beer Whisperer
6 Feb 13 at 2:00 pm
I reckon food allergies/poor immune systems/asthma are related to diet of fatty food, sugary food and drinks and processed rubbish that kids are given too regularly, and lack of exercise.
candy
6 Feb 13 at 2:03 pm
Polio is almost gone, but you can be killed by the Taliban for trying to eradicate it
TB is making a comeback.
Measles and mumps never went away.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 2:05 pm
“Do we stop little kids huggin’ and kissin’ each other as they are wont to do? It’s all da same germs, as Da Hairy Ape righly tells me about my aesthetically unshared drink bottle. ”
Apparently yes. MMM FM had people ringing up this morning with their horror stories about touching bans at schools. The worst i heard was a teenager getting detention for shaking hands with another boy after a game of rugby, FFS!!
If I was emperor of the world, i would have an official golden glove, for the explicit purpose of slapping the faces of those who enforce such ridiculous rules in the most menial of circumstances.
The Beer Whisperer
6 Feb 13 at 2:11 pm
Am I the only person who thinks that ‘peanut allergies’ are a psychosomatic load of bullshit?
Harden up, peanut heads!
Rabz
6 Feb 13 at 2:18 pm
No, an anaphylactic reaction is a purely physiological thing. A macho attitude won’t protect you from it.
Dangph
6 Feb 13 at 2:40 pm
What a pity.
Rabz
6 Feb 13 at 2:44 pm
Peanuts are Charles Darwin’s weapon of choice.
Leigh Lowe
6 Feb 13 at 3:38 pm
You’ve worked in the Middle East and Asia Minor?
Abu Chowdah
6 Feb 13 at 3:41 pm
Death from excessive laughter at a friends mishap is an omnipresent threat of a childhood well lived.
I still remember when the fat kid in our class slipped over on the muddy slope that ran down to the cricket oval, rolled to the bottom and split his shorts clean in two in the process. There he was, bawling in the mud with a white muddy arse sticking up. Because he was fat, one of the teachers had to lend him a pair of shorts, so he spent the rest of the day with a gigantic pair of shorts held in by a belt.
Even now it still brings mirth.
brc
6 Feb 13 at 4:19 pm
Makes you wonder how us older people ever survived without the help of all these people who know better.
Merilyn
6 Feb 13 at 4:29 pm
It would seem that peanuts & dairy, coupled with the new trend of hippies refusing immunisation will finish off the ignorant in society.
It’s amazing that some people will wax lyrical about the threat of climate change causing some inconvenience for their great-grandchildren but won’t immunise their kids against preventable diseases. Whooping cough, measles, rubella, all seem to be doing the rounds more and more, when these are supposed to be all vaccinated away.
Not much good worrying about your grandkids facing a 10 cm rise in the harbour level if you’re intent on letting your immediate offspring go to hospital based on internet advice that government vaccination is an evil pharma conspiracy, and that childhood diseases is best prevented by a diet of organic vegetarian fare.
brc
6 Feb 13 at 4:51 pm
My advice to mums with babies?
Let ‘em out into the backyard to play with the cow shit, eat a bit of dirt, and generally get dirty. Hose ‘em off before you bring ‘em in for a shower.
And get a cat or dog. And only give them antibiotics in that first year if they need the stuff – not if you want to give it.
Like any other system in the body, the Immune System needs something to work on. Just waving your arms and legs in the air is not going to increase muscle tone.
Winston SMITH
6 Feb 13 at 5:01 pm
Have you been blessed with issue, Winston?
Grey
6 Feb 13 at 6:03 pm
brc, I wasn’t even there and your story has brought tears to my eyes.
dover_beach
6 Feb 13 at 6:06 pm
Winstone,
That was my dear old Mum’s way of bringing up boys! We used to spend a lot of time playing in the half constructed building sites too. My favourite was walking across the open flooring bearers, good for foot eye coordination.
Forester
6 Feb 13 at 6:34 pm
As a GenX’er, I find the amount of cotton wool we wrap our kids in to be very troubling. Even fellow GenX’er parents do it, but I occasionally remind them what we did as kids and we lived to tell the tale. I mean, I don’t let my two eight year olds ride their bikes on a main road, but neither do I prevent them from doing most of what a healthy kid should be up to. They get into scrapes (particularly the boy), but that’s a learning experience for them.
My biggest battle is with Mrs TBH, who has this mortal fear of them being kidnapped or something. You just can’t debate this stuff rationally with a paranoid mother.
The creeping nanny state is a blight on our society and ordinary folks must resist and ridicule it as much as possible.
tbh
6 Feb 13 at 7:02 pm
what is a GenX’er?
Jim Rose
6 Feb 13 at 7:12 pm
Generation X, people born from the mid 60′s to the late 70′s.
tbh
6 Feb 13 at 7:17 pm
Perhaps not child abuse but pretty stupid given that chicken pox in very rare cases can lead to death of otherwise healthy children. And there’s a great alternative – just give them the chicken pox vaccination!
It’s pretty standard at kindys and childcare to make the children sit down at lunch and even help to setup, serve it and cleanup afterwards (where its provided).At the childcare my daughter went to being allowed to help was a reward! Just part of the socialisation education that they do.
TB is making a comeback because people in undeveloped countries are not getting immunised and when they catch the disease have partial medical treatment because of cost. So they’re essentially breeding antibiotic immune strains of TB which not surprisisingly eventually spread to Australia. A good example of why funding immunisation and medical programs for people outside of Australia, especially those on or sea borders is to our direct benefit. Diseases don’t respect borders!
Chris
6 Feb 13 at 7:28 pm
Very many just didn’t survive. It’s very fashionable to scream “political correctness” about life-preserving safety measures, but the child survival rate is a great deal higher than it was 30 or 40 years ago, let alone 100 years ago.
hammygar
6 Feb 13 at 7:46 pm
More’s the pity in your case.
Infidel Tiger
6 Feb 13 at 7:53 pm
Super, the panties hitched up their waste brigade is laying waste to this thread.
Token
6 Feb 13 at 8:03 pm
Exposure to germs is an important part of developing an efective immune system. That’s the closest I can come to finding a positive aspect to Hammy’s presence.
blogstrop
6 Feb 13 at 8:10 pm
CL: “I wonder if even some parents nowadays know what a gravel rash is.”
Ouch! I can feel that horrid tingling in my nerves already.
John A
6 Feb 13 at 11:33 pm
I notice that no well-salaried nanny made the fairly simple recommendation of placing clear plastic wrap over the cake before affixing candles thereon and, once the child has extinguished the festive flames, removing candles and plastic in one simple move before cutting the said cake and distributing the slices thereof.
Deadman
6 Feb 13 at 11:47 pm
but the child survival rate is a great deal higher than it was 30 or 40 years ago, let alone 100 years ago.
Thank you capitalism and the technological progress it begets.
John Mc
6 Feb 13 at 11:53 pm
If the federal government really wanted to do something for kid’s health, they would allow schools to ban kids who had not been immunised.
Yobbo
7 Feb 13 at 12:37 am
Yes Grey – two girls.
Also been a Registered Nurse for thirty years, and a Remote Area Nurse for the last fifteen.
Winston SMITH
7 Feb 13 at 11:13 am
Yep. And remove them from their parents.
Infidel Tiger
7 Feb 13 at 11:15 am
Go to any outback cemetery and look at the headstones. Aramac, White Cliffs, those sorts of places. You’ll find the resting places of entire families of mum, dad, and about five kids.
Thank Christ for ‘capitalism and the technological progress it begets.’
I’m also indebted to a poster from the 40′s found in a clean up in some old bush hospital, “You can fret over a needle, or learn to pray over a cot.”
Winston SMITH
7 Feb 13 at 11:21 am
Fair enough, although my advice would be to leave the medical advice to the doctors – at least in RL, you are free to spout any nonsense you like online.
Grey
7 Feb 13 at 1:09 pm
Right. Doctors hate normal development of the immune system because a libertarian leaning nurse states what 99% of health professionals recommend.
Fuck you just don’t have an off button, do you?
.
7 Feb 13 at 1:15 pm
Probably a state issue, but children who have not been immunised can be excluded when there are outbreaks in attempt to limit how big the outbreak gets.
I feel sorry for those who can’t take vaccinations due to medical conditions. Because they are put at extra risk from those who can but refuse to vaccinate. The good news is it looks a bit like the AVN is falling apart under the weight of lots of people complaining about them to various regulatory bodies. And they can’t keep up
Chris
7 Feb 13 at 1:26 pm
Dot the hygiene hypothesis is just a hypothesis and one lacking in evidence
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23103806
I don’t think that 99% of health professionals recommend babies playing with cowpats
Grey
7 Feb 13 at 1:31 pm
Let’s protect the children:
Deadman
7 Feb 13 at 4:04 pm
CL 1:52
The contraceptive pill has always had contraindications for women who suffer from any kind of thrombosis.
kae
8 Feb 13 at 9:26 pm