I mention this because the Australian Medical Association, hardly known for its risk-taking behaviour, says the federal government has gone too far with an announcement that, in essence, seeks to ban snot and dribble from the nation’s childcare centres.
For fear that kids spread their germs about like an infectious willy-willy, it has been judged there will be no blowing out of candles on shared birthday cakes; hand sanitiser will be used before and after the sandpit and there will be daily washing of cushions, toys, door knobs and floors. Ummmm…WTF? As if childcare workers don’t already do enough work?! And I am a childcare worker and have been for 18 years now, so I’ve seen it all and been through it all, and that is absolutely not the way to go.
The AMA has ridiculed at the new regulations. ”It’s normal and healthy to be exposed to a certain amount of environmental antigens that build up our immune systems,” said its president, Steve Hambleton. Too late. Our governments have already caught the incurable ”zero-risk” disease spread by insurers and bio-corporations. All those writhing, nasty germs. KILL THEM!
For years the pushers of disinfectants, deodorisers and antiseptic wipes have portrayed 99.9 per cent of household germs as an animated swarm of unsavoury critters you can actually see partying on your kitchen bench. Apparently you can whack them with a spatula if you’re quick enough.
When it comes to playground safety, there are also hundreds of strict regulations for childcare centres: bouncy materials underneath climbing frames for a ”soft fall” and safety gear for tricycles – kiddie helmets that must be immediately doused with chemicals and incinerated (sorry, sanitised) after each use.
At one parenting website I've seen, it’s recommended that there should be NO unsupervised play date with any animal, even a cat or bird, to avoid a dreadful scratch or peck. Heaven forbid if your kids come home after a malicious gnawing from next-door’s feral guinea pig. It’s fascinating to look back at the sweep of human history and seeing how our expectations have evolved…or devolved.
Drop any bubble-headed modern parent into a traditional hunter-gather society and they’d be decking out their little ones with an asbestos jumpsuit and accessorised fire extinguisher. Bear Grylls would be a childcare worker.
Recently, in an article in Newsweek, the US scientist and Pulitzer-prize winning author Jared Diamond wrote of the ancient societies he has observed for the past half a century in Papua New Guinea. ”Young children were considered to have responsibility for their own actions, and were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased,” writes Diamond. ”For example, if a baby was playing next to a fire, adults did not intervene. As a result, many adults in that society had burn scars, which were a legacy of their behaviour as infants.”
In many such communities young children were regarded as ”autonomous individuals whose desires should not be thwarted”. They were allowed to play with sharp knives, hot pots, and fires, reports Diamond.
Eeek! Surely no adult would let a child blunder into a burning fire. (I admit, you can’t always trust the observations of US anthropologists. In fact, just this week the indigenous leaders in West Papua have demanded an apology from Diamond for what they say is his portrayal of them as ”Stone Age” people in his latest book.)
But, Diamond finds much to admire in the way hunter-gather communities raise their kids and suggests we can learn from their 100,000-year history. ”Other Westerners and I are struck by the emotional security, self-confidence, curiosity, and autonomy of members of small-scale societies, not only as adults but already as children,” he says.
Children do gain their independence early but as babies are constantly stimulated, held, and in not one of 90 such societies he surveyed were mothers and babies sleeping in separate rooms.
The Efe pygmies in the Congo leave their babies to cry for no more than 10 seconds before being attended to. Skin-to-skin contact with mothers is extraordinary by our standards – the Navajo carried their infants 70 per cent of the time to the age of six months. And then there are the number of ”allo-parents”, (non biological care-givers) who pass even newborns from hand-to-hand to be kissed and bounced – it can be up to 14 adults who share the baby-love over short periods of time. These parents talk to their children much more than we do. My favourite observation is that the Indian children of Peru take almost half their meals with other families. To have a wide network of supportive adults keeps us sane, Diamond concludes.
No modern parent would dream of taking the risks with their children these ancient societies did. However, in seeking to eliminate all risks, we risk raising fearful children.
I have a friend who has a ragged ”ouch” scar over one eye, from when she ran head-first into a barbed wire fence during a midnight game of chasey. And you should look at the scar on her big toe when she was chopping wood with an axe at age nine…and missed. It’s a story she’s fond of telling at dinner parties.
