How to Prevent Back to School Cooties

I love back-to-school time.  There is something about shopping for school supplies and watching the kiddos gear up for a fresh new year that is therapeutic.  I HATE that it also means close indoor quarters which leads to sniffles and other bugs.  I’m not a big fan of hand sanitizers. I actually think they do more harm in the long run {although there are some no-brainers {can you say porta potties at sporting events?}.

So, how do you keep the kids healthy without pressure washing them in the driveway each afternoon?  Here are a few tips to give your kids the extra edge this year when it comes to avoiding germs and cooties:

1. Start with healthy foods.  Provide a healthy breakfast {or ingredients for one if you have older kids} and pack healthy lunches.  It’s like pumping them full of premium unleaded.  They will run better.
2. Establish and enforce reasonable bedtimes.  Sleep is important.  Plain and simple.  There are a million activities after school that keep kids up too late.  Try, if possible, to prioritize sleep.
3. Encourage kids to wash hands regularly.  A lot of classrooms just give the kids a pump of hand sanitizer in order to keep on schedule.  It’s okay to request that your child be allowed to go wash their hands instead.  The way I see it, you aren’t there to make friends, you are there to be your child’s advocate.
4. A lot of classes have “community” pencils, crayons, etc.  I ALWAYS provided to the community pool, as requested in the school supply list, but I also sent my kids with their own pencils, etc.  It only takes about a minute in a grade school classroom to see why kids get sick.  They chew on their pencils, wipe their noses with their hands, and in general, put their bodily fluids all over everything.  It is the nature of the age group, so no reason to have your kid grabbing into the germ pool.
5. Encourage kids NOT to share lunches.  My kids went to a school that didn’t allow lunch sharing, so I didn’t really have to do much {don’t get me wrong, I am sure some under-the-table deals were made}.
6. Send a water bottle instead of relying on the drinking fountain.  Lots of schools are allowing children to have water bottles at their desk now anyway.  It probably make the teacher’s life so much easier than having individual kids interrupt the lesson to ask to get a drink.  Studies have shown time and time again that school drinking fountains harbor more bacteria and germs than the toilet seats {gross}, so eliminating the need for your kiddo to stick their face on the drinking fountain seems like a no-brainer.

Do you do anything to prevent your kids from getting sick or do you just let it ride?

~Mavis