Five on Friday: Challenges in Keeping My Kids Healthy

Long before the current virus scare, I've spent many a flu season  trying to keep my home disinfected and my children healthy. The minute I hear "four kids puked at the all-school meeting today," I enter super-hyper-disinfecting-mode.

Of course, it's never as easy as it should be to keep my kids healthy and that's because they present some unique challenges to my pursuit:

1. All winter long I frequently clean"high touch surfaces" like door handles, light switches and the toilet flush but the joke's on me: nobody turns out the lights, shuts the door OR flushes the toilet in this house!

2. "I wasn't paying attention and just grabbed someone else's toothbrush so I used it."

3. They think it's hysterical to breath directly into each other's faces to prove how stinky their breath is.

4.  They don't think to mention to me, in spite of how much illness is going around school and at home, that their throat has been hurting for a few days.

5. Three-and-a-half out of five of my kids think wetting is equivalent to washing.

This seems to be improving lately and I am sure the school would like to take credit for this since they have been subjecting them to "so many boring videos about hand washing" 

But I'm going to thank virus hysteria: it has made publicly shaming people for not washing their hands properly perfectly acceptable. The kids are all starting to call each other out on this at school and actually use soap at home.