Teaching Kids About Proper Hygiene
While parents taught their children the basics of good hygiene for years, it’s a learning experience that’s taken on new meaning in the age of coronavirus. In addition to mask-wearing and social distancing, keeping ourselves and our living spaces clean is essential for preventing infection and staying healthy. Parents must teach their kids how to practice effective personal hygiene.
The following are the basics that every kid should know when it comes to practicing good hygiene:
Wash hands
A proper handwashing technique is critical for preventing the spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, even adults are susceptible to practicing less than ideal handwashing. The process of teaching kids how to wash their hands should follow the step-by-step guide published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additionally, parents can teach their kids to time their handwashing by singing the ABCs song to themselves. They should be washing their hands for the duration of the song. Furthermore, remind them of the importance of washing their hands with warm soapy water several times throughout the day.
Keep hands away from faces
The truth is that our hands accumulate germs as soon as we stop washing them. It’s never a good idea to touch our faces with our hands, especially near the noses and mouths. Given the tendency for kids to put their dirty hands all over their faces, parents need to do what they can to break this habit. For parents of younger kids, this might include efforts to stop finger sucking and nose picking before they go to school. On the other hand, older kids are more likely to touch their faces when playing with friends or engaging in nervous ticks, so parents ought to focus on those aspects when dealing with kids in that age range.
Clean their room
Kids have been told to clean their rooms for as long as there have been kids with rooms. Again, a timeless aspect of parenting takes on new significance during a global pandemic. While the chances of catching coronavirus (or any infectious disease for that matter) from dirty clothes and moldy yogurt cups are low, a less-than-clean environment only further enables us to look the other way about cleanliness in other areas of life. By teaching kids how to clean their rooms – and making sure they do so regularly – parents instill a sense of personal responsibility when it comes to personal hygiene.
Bath time protocol
Another rite of passage for kids is the moment they’re allowed to take baths and showers by themselves. Parents want to respect their children’s privacy, but it’s imperative they effectively instruct them on the proper way to wash themselves before letting them do so alone. Remember being told to wash behind your ears? That’s because it’s a common area for people to skip. The same is true for other areas of the body. For this reason, making kids practice proper bath time protocol should be a top priority for parents.
Oral care essentials
Again, we arrive at something that counts as a mini-milestone in most households, something between toilet training and tying our shoelaces. Nonetheless, proper oral hygiene is something many grown-ups struggle with themselves. For most parents, teaching kids how to take care of their teeth is easier said than done. Yet it must be done, even if it means looking in the mirror (which it does anyway) and practicing what you preach.
Achieving public health goals, especially during a pandemic, depends on the active involvement of individuals. By law and by nature, parents are responsible for how their kids practice the generally accepted norms of personal hygiene and environmental cleanliness. In the age of COVID-19, parents’ role in teaching kids the basics of personal hygiene has become imperative for the sake of public health.
It might seem high pressure, but it’s been a part of the social fabric for decades. After all, laws against spitting on the sidewalk, expectations to wash hands after using the toilet, and other inherited social norms about health and hygiene are partly the result of the past’s pandemics. Our ancestors did it, so we can too.
