• Question: Should parents protect their children from diseases and viruses when they are young, if not why? For example; A parent protects their child from diseases like a common cold while they are young and when they finally get ill its affects their immune system intensly.

    Asked by nicole10 to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Nicole,

      Yes, younf children need to be protected until all vaccinations have been administered to help them develop a fully functional immune system.

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Parents should protect their chidlren from diseases that are going to be harmful. A common cold is unlikely to kill a child unless they are very young baby and then you have to be careful as the baby does not have a good enough immune system to cope with all viruses and bacteria.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      good question… i think making sure that any ilnesses children get to not make them dangerously ill is the safest bet..then they get their dose of bacteria with minimum risk….of course vaccines are even safer…they really are

    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Good question nicole. What parents should not do is get obsessed with keeping their children really, really clean. Make sure they get their jabs and they’ll be OK. Getting a cold when you are little is part of growing up. The immune system will pretty much always see off a common cold, even if parents were a bit obsessive with being clean.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Good question. When a child is very young, their immune system is not fully developed, so it is definitely best if they don’t get illnesses (they are growing loads, so any illness can knock them off track a bit- my daughter got a bug when she was 6 months old, and she lost a lot of weight and was very poorly).
      There is a hypothesis that we are keeping children too clean though, called the hygeine hypothesis. This states that if we are too clean growing up, we are more likely to get allergies in later life. So, there is an idea that a lot of people believe that keeping kids too protected from germs is a bad thing. But, I think before we make our kids more dirty, we need more research in this area.

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