To think dad should have stopped babies touching handrails on the tube and then sticking their hands in their mouth after?

[bottomsup12]

Just that really? Saw a man holding his baby walking round the tube and letting the baby grab the rails etc and then just watching the child lick their hands after??

As a lifelong tube commuter I have seen people (blokes) scratching their arses or picking their noses and then casually grabbing the handrails.... to think a baby will be licking their hands after touching it horrifies me!

Would it be reasonable to have said something to the man?

@bottomsup12 when mine was a baby she would lick my elbows frequently 😂

The fact you press lift buttons with your elbows makes me think you might have undiagnosed anxiety/OCD. Or did Covid affect you really badly psychologically? Either way, you don’t want to make your kids germaphobes, it isn’t good for them. I have friends who grew up with mums like that and it’s messed them up a bit.

I feel with you, but many people are oblivious and I don’t think it would have been worth your while to say anything.

We lived in a hot county when my Dd was young. Once we were shopping in a supermarket I remember turning around and seeing her licking the short Perspex stand on the raw chicken counter!

This was a county that didn’t have the food safety laws we have, nor refrigerated trucks or food handling safety regulations.

Im older now and since COVID I’m much more aware of the presence of germs on most things we touch.

Please don’t ask about dishes of free peanuts that used to be common in bars.

That’s what hand sanitiser and baby wipes are for. Not as good but better than nothing. Using your elbows and wrist to touch anything in public is not healthy behaviour. HTH 🙄

@Jumpingthruhoops - Not touching any surfaces in public for fear of getting ill is disordered thinking. You might want to look into getting some support for that.

My nephew (3) licked a lamppost the other day. Very gross but ….

Don't push your anxieties around germs on to others. What the baby did is normal, their using their senses to discover the world around them. However the way you live your life like pressing buttons with your elbow and being so bothered by strangers that you start a thread on mumsnet is not normal. If your daily life is being affected by fears around germs and cleanliness I would suggest you speak to your gp.

Couldn’t get worked up about another parents parenting really. I’d have been extremely pissed if someone pointed out to me my (at the time) toddler DC trying to (and occasionally successfully managing to) lick public rubbish bins was unhygienic. I knew it was, sometimes the wee bugger just managed to lick it as we walked a tad too close. No idea what the fascination was but they have the best immune system of anyone I’ve ever met. Somehow manages to avoid every single bug the rest of us come down with, including the twice caught Covid we all got that darling DC had not a hint of.

So would you have been filled with the same urge to patronise the baby's mum, or is it only dads who fill you with horror?

It's pretty normal - exposure to germs in day to day life is good for immune system development.
As for it being blokes scratching 'things', yesterday I had the delight of seeing a lady on the bus give herself a 'scratch and sniff' 😬

A good reminder of why I usually drive! If you're going to demonise men, at least pick something that's unique to men.

How well do you think that would have gone down - some stranger giving you parenting advice. Good luck with that!

I never let my dc touch anything like this and carry hand wipes to sanitise their hands regularly when out, we change clothes as soon as we get home too , wash school uniform daily as well etc etc etc . We’ve been fined over school attendance so we have to keep them well at all costs now

I’d be more wound up if the baby was licking the handrails. If they want to put gross stuff in their mouths, more power to them, but don’t add spit to all the germs already on the rails 😂

And then the next step is health anxiety. MN is full of this. It’s more unhealthy than the germs…

I have raised two kids to adulthood in London without carrying hand sanitiser, and without them ever getting norovirus 💪

Poor poor kids. We have generations growing up with insane levels of so-called ‘hygiene’ from obsessive anxious parents. It never used to be like this.

Why on earth do you all change your clothes as soon as you arrive home??? What illness exactly are you trying to prevent?

It’s a difficult one because - assuming you mean a toddler that was walking - they need to be taught to use hand rails for safety so sometimes things like the licking happen before you can do anything about it apart from use it as an opportunity to tell your child not to lick their hands

I remember when my baby was licking the wheels of his pram 😆🤮

YABU.

You read some real crazy shit on here.

Funny the worst sickness bug we've had as a family was summer 2021 when hand sanitiser was everywhere, normally I avoid it unless in hospitals, but we were using it at that point, and its the only one that's floored us all.

Babies are meant to explore and be exposed to germs.

IME, there's a very high correlation between parents who obsess over germs and are forever chucking hand sanitiser about and those parents who are baffled when their children come home from nursery or school with every illness going.

Toddler might have touched something nasty, but nothing happens? No harm, no foul.

My mum was a total germophobe so we all grew into grotty little rat beasts that eat off the floor

Genuinely interested in what OP and those who agree with OP, think is going to happen. Like what do you think you're preventing by only touching surfaces others have touched with your elbows? Are there any particular viruses or diseases you think are transferred in this manner?

And how do you do other daily tasks, like eating out where someone else has prepared your food, or using a public bathroom? Handling cash?

Do you find being out in public stressful? It just feels like a very anxiety inducing line of thought and I don't understand the logic.

@TawnyT lots of illnesses are spread through touch norovirus and influenza to name two and I don't particularly want either.

There's a big jump from responsible and reasonable hand hygiene and OCD or other behaviours and conditions that limit your life as you are so preoccupied by picking up pathogens.

If I was eating out I'd wash my hands before I ate and have trust in the people cooking and handling my food that they follow good food hygiene practices.

Using a public bathroom I just wash my hands after.

I wash my hands when I get home from being out and about if I've been touching things or handling cash. I'm not a fan of hand sanitizer as it dries my skin out but that's always an option after being on public transport or using an ATM.

I'm not an anxious person but good hygiene is just a basic method of preventing diseases, surely that's a lesson everyone learnt during COVID there are still plenty of opportunities to pick up communicable diseases and building up and maintaining immune system throughout the rest of the day, even if you wash your handsor avoid touching high touch areas like doors, ATM buttons, not eating bar snacks etc

Whilst baby's are meant to explore and put random things in their mouths modern living forces us into situations that are not natural for us, a neanderthal baby was never on a tube surrounded by hundreds of strangers that don't share their immune make up. It's well known that people that are in cramped conditions and high populations lead to more illnesses, TB is less of a concern in the UK but is common enough in other areas of the world.

Viruses , stomach bugs etc - all the things that have meant they’ve had either high fevers with illness or d and v. It happened so much that in the end school didn’t believe us and obviously with d and v you don’t see the gp so we didn’t have proof and it was marked as unauthorised so we got fined.

We are pressure so this is the only thing I can think of to try and limit illnesses

That’s awful that you weren’t believed and were fined for your kids being unwell.