A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H1N1

When dropping G-man off at Parent's Day Out this week, there was a notice on the door that a child in the Monday session had been diagnosed with strep throat. The message contained what to watch for in your own child and when to call the doctor. 

Ooh, germs.

A friend of mine is pregnant with #2. Her child plays in our groups all the time but doesn't go to any formal facility (school daycare, gym child care, PDO, etc.). She's scheduled to start a little 2-hour-a-week church daycare but now may not because of what she could pick up and bring home.  

Sneaky germs.

Our Gymboree location has a lengthy handout on 2009's Contagion of the Year, the H1N1 flu virus. (Congrats, by the way, to ol' Swiney for this distinction. The media thanks you for something to fill the airwaves while we parents always enjoy new things to worry about.) The information details signs, symptoms and prevention tips.

Mean germs.

I get it. There is a ton of stuff out there just waiting to get into G-man and wreak some havoc. It's not like I'm throwing used needles at him, but I do find it hard to control the situation, short of keeping him home and in a bubble all day. 

Let's face it, most of the prevention techniques are common sense: cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, wash your hands, don't share drinks or utensils. But have you ever tried to do that with an early toddler?

G-man and his friends specialize in finding filthy things and swapping whatever they've got. They pick up things from the ground and put them in their mouths. They stick their fingers in god knows what and then immediately grab another kid's hand/head/lunch. All sippy cups are community sippy cups. I pack snacks based on what other kids like because I know that's who will eat them, while the G-man mooches something else (possibly from the floor under a chair or shoe). Any play date is a study in fluids - bodily and otherwise - mingling in perfect harmony. But at this age, what do we do?

Oh sure, at any given moment one of us mommies is helpfully telling her child, "No, that's not your drink. Where's your drink? Put that one down." Meanwhile, the child in question has already sneezed on this cup, dropped it on the dirt, seen another toddler (still not the original owner) pick it up and take a drink and moved on to yet another beverage that doesn't belong to them. 

They simply don't get it. And why should they? We are all in the Let's Share! phase of parental encouragement. G-man is told to share a toy, wait his turn, play nicely with others all the time. We're teaching them to give freely and not fuss when something they want is out of their grasp for while. They are just now starting to understand this and then we want to throw a wrinkle in the plan? An exclusion? That's tough to digest.

And let's not forget that we under-2 parents have a roadblock to our prevention and care as well: we don't have complete communication yet. Until we get some more skills how am I supposed to know if G-man's throat hurts? Or if he has a headache? Or if his runny nose is the start of something big? Without being able to read all of the signs, we have only a limited idea of when to keep them home and when to turn them loose. Some err on the side of caution, some practically choose to send their kiddos out hoping we don't notice the chicken pox. There is a happy medium, but it's a moving target and we have really bad aim. Being able to ask, "Does your tummy hurt?" and get a real answer is something I'm totally excited about. Guessing is exhausting.

Until then, we'll all amble about rather cluelessly, hoping the community food, drink and grime is building strong immune systems for when the big one really does happen.