Germaphobe

 

You send your kids to school and hope for them to learn all sorts of fabulously wonderful things. Writing, reading, math, social skills. All of which Alex has learned above and beyond his tiny kindergarten call of duty. What you do not expect them to learn are the things that you just don't see coming.

One day, the school nurse came to Alex's class and had each of them put on some special lotion that had small particles in it that would show up under a black light. These small particles were to represent germs. They look at their hands under the black light and see all these "germs" and are told that this is what your hands look like before you wash your hands. Each kid then washes their hands and looks under the black light again to see that washing your hands takes away all those germs. It's a fantastic thing to teach kids, you know? Washing your hands and staying healthy, blah, blah, blah. The problem? My kid, due to his slightly neurotic tendencies thanks to food allergies and the like, took the "germ" lotion experiment a tad too seriously. Quite frankly, it scared the metaphorical poop out of him. From that day on, he has become a germaphobe. He washes his hands all the time. No. Seriously. All the time. Upwards of 30 times per day since the experiment. At the peak of this problem, it was so bad that his knuckles were swollen to the point of looking as though he no longer had knuckles. His hands were more raw than ground beef, cracked and bleeding, and so dry that even his teacher asked me what is wrong with his hands. Alex, being asthma boy, is also prone to outbreaks of eczema. So dry skin for him is slightly more problematic than for others. Turns out that he was using so much germ chaser between washing his hands at school that we had to get him an alcohol free hand foam for his own personal use in the class so as to cut down on the horrific burning of his poor skin. When I say that he's a germaphobe, I'd be likely to compare him to Bill Murray's character in the movie "What About Bob?". He washes his hands after silly things like, oh...I dunno...taking a shower, touching his shirt...touching the "dirty" soap dispenser! If you hand him a snack, he promptly asks, "Did you wash your hands?" If you say no, he'll throw the snack in the trash complaining of the tainted food. He is terrified of germs. Absolutely, whole-heartedly, terrified.

I've been patient with him. So far, I've had a tiny bit of success. He's now down to about 20 times washing his hands at home during the day and now trusts me to wash my hands before feeding him (most of the time). It's just another little curve ball that life threw our way and it naturally happened to Alex. Poor kid. It's not like he doesn't have enough to worry about already. Oh, and if you're wondering how the germaphobe times are rubbing off on Abby, it's pretty simple. It's not. She chews her nails, never wants to wash her hands, eats food off the floor, and merrily wipes her nose on the back of her hand giggling all the while. Kids. What are ya gonna do?