Would You Like Gonorrhea With Your Fries?
Ok. I am guilty as charged.
I have been known to let our daughter Gingy, almost 4, play on the playgrounds at major fast food chains.
Some of you are beyond repulsed at this while others without children are asking, “Fast food joints have PLAYGROUNDS?!?!”
Yes, many of them do.
And one mother is on a crusade to inform the world of the hidden dangers crawling all over these toddler utopias.
Dangers as in GERMS.
The childhood development specialist and mother of four warns that these playgrounds are crawling with fecal matter and strains of bacteria and staph. She warns that these bugs can lead to the transmission of meningitis and gonorrhea.
YUCK.
And they thought the sodium and fat was bad for us!
She took her son to one such playground and after numerous complaints to no avail, she took matters into her own hands and swabbed portions of the structure. The lab results allegedly came up positive for more than a dozen types of disease causing pathogens.
Are these play area the cleanest places on earth?
Hardly.
But do you think they clean the local playground any more vigorously? Why do we allow our kids to play ANYWHERE??
Even daycare or playgrounds while we work out? Your child’s best buddy’s house?
How about the shopping cart with the little race cars your kids shriek for when you go buy groceries? Think THOSE are cleaned after every screaming child?
Do we swab EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE?
Studies have shown that we are practically better off eating our lunch in the bathroom than at our desks at work because our cubicles are ripe with germs like we couldn’t imagine.
But we don’t stop eating at our desks and we don’t stop taking our kids to the neighborhood slides. Or even to the playground at your local drive thru eatery.
And as gross as this stuff sounds, there isn’t an epidemic of kids getting sick from this or they’d have all been shut down by now.
Plus the Hand Sanitizer Generation of Parents need to realize that they are doing their children a disservice by squirting antibacterial soap into their dirty little hands around every corner.
As well intentioned as they are, they are compromising and maybe even destroying their child’s immunity to bugs and illnesses.
It used to be we’d come home FILTHY from playing hard.
Today parents practically administer first aid at the first sign of dirt. They want their children in bubbles.
If you want a sterile environment, buy your kid a bubble.
You can probably find one online.
Just don’t let them play in it for goodness sakes.