to be annoyed that DH tells the children not to hold bannisters due to germs

[rac321]

We were in a hotel and DS (aged 3) and DD (aged 5) were walking down the stairs holding the bannister. DH tells them to take their hands off the bannister as it's not clean. There was no visible dirt but he was worried about DS and DD getting germs on their hands by holding a public bannister. To me this seems madness as surely they are better holding on to a bannister than falling down stairs. But DH says I should be more concerned about them getting germs on their hands and putting their hands in their mouths and getting sick.
We both think the other is wrong - opinions pls

Your kids should not be clutching at geriatric Olympians.

It's "banister."

I don't hold banisters for that reason... Pans I have told my kids not to if it's in a place I find too gross. I.e car parks that have pissy stairwells

Pans? And*

Unreasonable in a hotel, but totally reasonable in a multi storey car park with urine addled stairwells!

Your husband is being U.

ath the thought that banisters in naice hotels are fine, but the ones ordinary members of the public might touch are gross.......

All banisters are germ ridden, all door handles are germ ridden but to teach small children this, is ridiculous. I was always onto my kids from dot, 'Hold on to the rail!' They never fell down the stairs ever. Just teach them the importance of washing their hands regularly!

I would point out to him that your children do have an immune system, but they cannot fly.

Building up their immune system is very important. Falling down the stairs is not. As a healthy child of the 70s, and a healthy 50 year old, all this overly clean business really gets on my nerves and does nobody any good.I am sure the hotel had acceptable hygiene standards.

Am I the only one who now really wants to know the correct way to hold a bannister?

Please tell me, chemenger !

chemenger: "655 people in the UK died in falls on stairs in England and Wales in 2010."

Out of interest, where did this statistic come from? I think the government stopped compiling accident statistics a few years ago, so just curious really.

I agree that the OP's DH sounds a bit bonkers - though I also think we are exposed to contradictory messages about germs. We're often told about the importance of washing hands, because germs are spread through doorknobs and so on, but at the same time there's always an expert popping up to tell us that children aren't exposed to enough germs and that we're all overanxious about cleanliness.

I'd like to touch some of these barristers

Particularly 1, 2, 6 and 21 as a representative of the older man.

I think 5 is worth a punt too. He's got that: 'My, Miss Jones, you're beautiful without your glasses' look about him.

Otherwise, I can see where your DH is coming from OP, but I fight it as that way madness lies...

Just a little note to all who don't hold onto banisters. I moved into my house last year with no rail on the stairs just a fancy oak flat piece of wood, more for effect than for use. I slipped and fell 5 steps and broke several ribs, there is no pain like it. I am still suffering the after effects now and it happened last April. SO HOLD ON TO THE RAIL!!!!!

I do tell mine not to run their hands alond metal rails that are at the side of the subways here. No stairs to trip on, just sloping ground - but the subways are revolting, anyway.

Ds1 regularly wipes the entire length of the rail with his sleeve. sigh

May be he should think back to his childhood and what him and his friends did while playing out. We knew not to eat yellow snow, washed hands after toilet, hands over nose and mouth when coughing etc. but would pick up sticks and stuff off the floor when playing, touch doors and bannisters in school etc. Okay, we did get illness sometimes but that's to be expected.

As everyone else as said, they need to build up immunity and much more risk from falling.

However I do tell my ds not to touch everything in the public toilets because he'd be sticking his hand in the sanitary bin etc, and people are not good at cleaning up after themselves for some reason. Surely they don't leave their loos at home in the same state as they do public ones?

I imagine a hotel banister is cleaner than a lot of the other things they touch every day- car door handles? Hand rails on climbing frames, slides etc? At least I imagine a hotel banister would get polished every day!

I am a bit lax about this sort of thing, but we always wash hands after using the toilet and before eating. My kids are pretty healthy.

Your other half is being given a very rough ride here over what sounds like a genuine phobia. He is, after all, to his mind simply protecting them from illness. He needs to seek help to overcome this fear, not be given grief about it.

What an idiot he is.

I fell down the stairs breaking my leg in 3 places as the bit of the stairs I fell down didn't have a banister.

Buy some anti-bacterial hand gel for post-banister use?

hackmum I got the statistics from the Guardian, so they must be true! They are here: mortality stats. I think they are still published by the office of national statistics, but I could be wrong.

timeforahaircut I knew someone would ask the proper way to hold a handrail. I can't find the original paper I saw it in, it was at a conference in 1991 and for some reason I have not kept the proceedings. I seem to remember that you hold the hand rail behind you when going downstairs and in front when going up, so that your hand is always above your body, which makes sense. I haven't seen it again so I think that it was a micro-management step(!) too far.

Your other half is being given a very rough ride here over what sounds like a genuine phobia. He is, after all, to his mind simply protecting them from illness. He needs to seek help to overcome this fear, not be given grief about it.

Agreed but the danger is that he will pass this phobia on to his children unless he gets a grip when he is around them. Does he accept that he has a problem with this OP or does he think he is being entirely reasonable? Do you want your children to grow up to be herm-osessive too?

I knew a woman whose mother had been terrified of thunderstorms and when she was a child her mother would go sit in the cupboard under the stairs and take the children with her whenever there was a storm. When I knew this lady she was in her 60s and she still had to sit in the cupboard when it thundered. I lived with her for a while and I had many a conversation with her through the half open cupboard door.

By contrast we had a neighbour who had "caught" her cat phobia from her mother - Mum dragging her across the road to avoid a cat - but she was determined to avoid passing this on to her own DD. We kept cats at the time and this lady struggled to be normal around the cats and would encourage her DD to pet and play with them when they came round. Eventually they got a cat of their own and both mother and daughter wre happily cat-phobic free.

Getting a cold/flu is less serious then falling down the stairs and breaking your neck.

Also we all need to build up our immunity so getting the odd illness is fine.

Thanks for all the messages. I have shown this to DH who is in every other way a lovely person and a great dad - although I do think he has a thing about germs in general (not just when walking down stairs)! He's said I should have pointed out that he usually holds DSs' hands when going down stairs but he couldn't due to carrying bags and he was walking in front of them. He has agreed to let them hold barristers bannisters banisters in future, but he can't quite get his head around the logic .

Hand-holding is all very well - especially for tinies - but by school age they need to be able to go down stairs safely alone.