A germ-obsessed 4yo - any advice or experience?

[thebluefoxategreensocks]

My 4yo daughter has become rather germ-obsessed in the past couple of months! It started out with excessive hand washing (when her hands didn't even need to be washed) and has resulted in her hands becoming red, sore and raw - nearly bleeding a couple of times! So we've tried to encourage her to wash them less - which was working for a few days, but seems she's already back to her previous habits. And now it's on to toilet roll! Multiple times I've found the toilet full of paper, dry paper up to the rim! I couldn't work out what this was from, till she told me that the toilet paper had little specks of brown (recycled paper?) and she was trying to get to a clean piece! But also she's using massive amounts to be sure her hands are clean, and today it's big wads of paper to use when flushing the toilet, to touch the handle with! I was taught this sort of level of hygiene when working in a nursing home but surely this is a bit much at home?! lol Not sure even where she's getting these ideas from! She does have a Little Princess book about germs, which talks about washing a lot. But surely one book wouldn't give her all these ideas, right?

Anyone gone through this, or have any ideas? I am literally watching the rolls of toilet paper vanish before my eyes! And of course, the sore hands are rather an issue too!

My sister went through exactly the same sort of thing at around the same age, it was mainly excessive handwashing though, i'll pick my mums brains later and see how it got sorted.

Maybe get her a little bottle of hand sanitiser - a kid friendly one - Home Scents do one called Bugs at Bay - tell her it makes everything clean and that she has it on her hands the firt wont get her. Tell her it needs to last a long time as it was very special just for her so she doesnt use it all on the first day!!

also tell her the dirt wont get her as those firts are pretty viscious!

octo thanks for the tip and sorry I failed to come back here - life is busy! The hand sanitiser sounds good, but we have a very no-chemicals rule in our house due to boys with very sensitive skin and allergies. So all detergents/products with SLS etc are banned, I'm afraid! But thankfully Abigail is doing a lot better about excessive hand washing just now - though I think she's still using lots of toilet roll! LOL

I'd probably introduce the concept of freindly germs and say that whilst there are bad germs, there are good germs that help our bodies ( like the bacteria in yogurt, the one sthat help make cheese etc) and lead onto expalining that we have some helpful germs on our skin too and too much washing will destroy those and make it easier for skin to get damaged. Explain thats he is doing a good job withw ashing her hands after using the toilet but that you only need one good wash and that too much toilet paper isn't very good for the pipes that take the dirty stuff away from the house. I ithink it could be just that she like shaving a sense of control over these germs and her book mentions washing alot, so just think about how you can expand that into things that work for you.

After catching a Norovirus from a local soft play centre (we think) my DS (5) is going through a phase where he doesn't want to go anywhere where there might be other children just in case they have germs!! I know this is very frustrating and I completely sympathise with you, just hoping he grows out of it PDQ!!!