what-even-is-thiss:

what-even-is-thiss:

what-even-is-thiss:

So I do wonder how many children growing up during this pandemic are going to end up with like six thousand allergies.

My mom was a severe germophobe and it got worse as she got older and she got my dad into the habit of sanitizing everything. So when I was a baby I was allowed to hang out in dust and eat dirt and lick the cats back or whatever like a normal baby but my brother, who was born six years of germaphobia later, was constantly cleaned and living in a sanitized house.

I developed a slight allergy to bananas in my early 20s. That’s it. My brother as soon as he started eating was allergic to wheat, milk, every kind of nuts, bananas, avocados, peas, peanuts, and most kinds of beans.

After my mom died my dad kept up the sanitizing and my brother’s allergies seemed to keep getting worse. He ended up going to an allergist about it and she basically told him “Stop sanitizing everything and let him play in dirt.”

So we stopped sanitizing everything and my brother was let loose on the backyard were of course he did toddler stuff like eat dirt and chase butterflies.

Nowadays, he’s only allergic to nuts, peanuts, and bananas. And that’s not just a result of him growing up. His allergies started dropping off one by one months after he was allowed to get dirty and we stopped sanitizing everything.

When children grow up in a sanitized environment their immune systems find other things to fight. We’ve already got people saying that they’re gonna keep sanitizing their homes and their hands constantly even after the pandemic is over.

I’m not a doctor. I’m just repeating things that my brother’s doctors have told us.

Don’t sanitize everything forever. Let your kids play in the dirt and hang out with your dog. It’s good for them. Don’t turn your home into a bacteria-free hellscape. It’s bad for you.