The hygiene hypothesis states that lack of exposure to germs and parasites increases risk of auto-immune disease. Our pediatrician recommended letting Lily playing in the dirt for this reason.
It is fairly common-sense where I live—docs say “kids need to eat a kg of dirt a year”. The worst thing I did was picking up pigeon feathers from the pavement and licking it. That was actually too much for my immune system, got a streptococcus infection.
We too have a 1.5 year old daughter and it is weird how most things simply don’t relate: living in a new build in-situ concrete apartment house, new built = strictly regulated, things like lead or pesticides didn’t even come into question. IKEA has always been an obvious choice instead of buying something expensive.
About the child seat in the car, funny story: I was wanting to get rid of my car as it was entirely unnecessary with two tramway lines in front of our flat, but I was in the old “if you have a kid, you must have a car, for emergencies” mood. Well, we had them, as we had this yellow skin / bilirubin issue after birth and went back to the hospital several times, but every time it was far easier to just roll the pram on the comfortably pram and wheelchair accessible tramway and get off 8 stops later than to put the baby seat in the car (we could not leave it there as the sun would make it hot) and then put a sleeping baby in it who will probably wake up and be angry etc. So we got rid of the car soon after. It feels weird, to have a family without a car but I am starting to think it may be the future in such densely settled European metropoles (we live in Vienna). I am worried about my driving skills deteriorating though. Gone are the times when I lived in Birmingham, drove to a client in Edinburgh and wasn’t even too tired.
We are not health food types, classic meat and potatoes types more like, so my wife was getting omega-3 from a timed vitamin and supplement complex meant for pregnant women. Timed = different packages for different stages of pregnancy. I have heard some debates about omega-3 pills doing less than actually eating fish, but never really believed them, it is literally fish oil extracts after all. However she likes smoked salmon (IKEA gravadlax) so she ate it occasionally.
Overally so far our results seem genetics based. My daughter is like me in the sense of big, strong, heavy, and lazy, i.e. not wanting to stand and walk at 17 months. This is not strength based, when she gets fussy she kicks like a horse, it is probably laziness based like in my case or poor balance (could also be inherited from me).
She does not speak either and is really fussy, screaming a lot, which is worrisome and stressful, this is a bit unlikely to be genetics (both of us were early talkers and this is usually a sign of intelligence so I am starting to have some fears in the IQ department).
She does not speak either and is really fussy, screaming a lot
Where I live, a child with in that situation would probably be referred for early childhood intervention (a free service where health visitors come to your home and work with you and your child). I wonder if that’s available where you live?
For kids that are slow in speaking (or really any babies), one thing that’s common here is to use baby sign language to allow them to communicate before they’re speaking. We’ve found it’s really helpful for our daughter to be able to communicate things like “more” and “all done” with hand signals. Still working on “hungry” vs. “thirsty”, since currently all that is encompassed by “more.” I think it reduces fussiness because she can express her needs better and we can meet them better.
It is fairly common-sense where I live—docs say “kids need to eat a kg of dirt a year”. The worst thing I did was picking up pigeon feathers from the pavement and licking it. That was actually too much for my immune system, got a streptococcus infection.
We too have a 1.5 year old daughter and it is weird how most things simply don’t relate: living in a new build in-situ concrete apartment house, new built = strictly regulated, things like lead or pesticides didn’t even come into question. IKEA has always been an obvious choice instead of buying something expensive.
About the child seat in the car, funny story: I was wanting to get rid of my car as it was entirely unnecessary with two tramway lines in front of our flat, but I was in the old “if you have a kid, you must have a car, for emergencies” mood. Well, we had them, as we had this yellow skin / bilirubin issue after birth and went back to the hospital several times, but every time it was far easier to just roll the pram on the comfortably pram and wheelchair accessible tramway and get off 8 stops later than to put the baby seat in the car (we could not leave it there as the sun would make it hot) and then put a sleeping baby in it who will probably wake up and be angry etc. So we got rid of the car soon after. It feels weird, to have a family without a car but I am starting to think it may be the future in such densely settled European metropoles (we live in Vienna). I am worried about my driving skills deteriorating though. Gone are the times when I lived in Birmingham, drove to a client in Edinburgh and wasn’t even too tired.
We are not health food types, classic meat and potatoes types more like, so my wife was getting omega-3 from a timed vitamin and supplement complex meant for pregnant women. Timed = different packages for different stages of pregnancy. I have heard some debates about omega-3 pills doing less than actually eating fish, but never really believed them, it is literally fish oil extracts after all. However she likes smoked salmon (IKEA gravadlax) so she ate it occasionally.
Overally so far our results seem genetics based. My daughter is like me in the sense of big, strong, heavy, and lazy, i.e. not wanting to stand and walk at 17 months. This is not strength based, when she gets fussy she kicks like a horse, it is probably laziness based like in my case or poor balance (could also be inherited from me).
She does not speak either and is really fussy, screaming a lot, which is worrisome and stressful, this is a bit unlikely to be genetics (both of us were early talkers and this is usually a sign of intelligence so I am starting to have some fears in the IQ department).
Where I live, a child with in that situation would probably be referred for early childhood intervention (a free service where health visitors come to your home and work with you and your child). I wonder if that’s available where you live?
For kids that are slow in speaking (or really any babies), one thing that’s common here is to use baby sign language to allow them to communicate before they’re speaking. We’ve found it’s really helpful for our daughter to be able to communicate things like “more” and “all done” with hand signals. Still working on “hungry” vs. “thirsty”, since currently all that is encompassed by “more.” I think it reduces fussiness because she can express her needs better and we can meet them better.