Do all kids get worms now??

[RedRobyn2021]

I have never had worms and had never heard of them being a thing that children get until recently, I keep getting stuff up on Instagram saying as a parent you will experience worms in your children at some time

Please tell me this is nonsense??

God just reading this thread is giving me an itchy bum 😆 I had worms a few times as a child but the medicine always knocked them on the head. My kids have never had them which I find baffling! My daughter has had nits a couple of times when she was younger but thankfully hasn't had them for years.

My kids love getting worms.
Both are nail biters.
Not had nits yet though.

2 DC - one a nail biter and has had worms once; the other isn't and hasn't.

I never had worms myself as far as I know but I remember my sibling (a thumb sucker) having them once.

My dd had thread worms four times before she was five. The last time she had them, I really hammered home the importance of hand washing and not biting her nails. She was old enough by that point to fully understand what I was saying and find the idea of worms really gross. Fingers crossed, she's not had them since.

I was obsessive about my DC having clean hands and I would never let them put their fingers in their mouth - ugh I just find it so disgusting. Even now they’re grown up, I can’t stand seeing people with fingers in their mouths. I get cross if I see checkout operators biting their nails then touching people’s shopping. Yuck.

My three DC never had worms despite being told it was inevitable.

You think your kid had never had worms but I think the numbers are at least thirty percent of school age children will have them. They don’t always have symptoms either.
My daughter went through several periods over a few years complaining about her underneath hurting at night. I kept taking her to the gp and they couldn’t see anything wrong with her and nobody even mentioned worms. Last year she was complaining similarly and I had a look and there was one worm. I think she’d had them before, she’d also had a lot of trouble with her tummy that suddenly improved once we’d had the worm medicine.

Wow-the eggs are airborne? I've never heard that before. I had them so many times as a child, used to cry my heart out and wash my hands obsessively and was so embarrassed about it. Kept nails short-still got them.

We had nits a lot when I was a kid, but never worms. My kids have had worms a few times but never nits. Just the luck of the draw I guess!

Omg I wish I hadn't read this. worms? Like dogs get? Omg I feel sick

The school I work in had an outbreak a few years ago. One member of staff struggled with reinfections and it started to affect her health.

I managed to never get them, but they're certainly not a new thing and we're around in the 80s and 90s. Maybe people just talk about them more now.

It's fairly common. We have had both worms and nits in our house. Worms once, nits two or three times but only in infants.

I never had worms as a child. I had nits a lot, I'd catch them even if one child in school had them. I have memories of being stood by the back door (best light) and my mum coming my hair with the metal nit comb for what seemed like hours.

What do I have to do if my kid gets worms?

@Mumoftwo1312 you need vosene kids shampoo with lice repellent. My DC have never had them, we use this every time they wash their hair. Asda and Tesco sell it.

My 2 have never had worms or nits (yet!) - ages 8 and 11. I've never had worms but I do remember having nits as a child. I had long hair, my DCs have short hair, and neither are nail biters - maybe that's it?
Or it's my superior hygiene and parenting!!

My kids were young in the first half of the '90s and worms and nits appeared in our lives several times. Worms much easier to deal with than nits, as the treatment got rid of them pretty much overnight. The conditioning and nit combing went on forever.

Research has found that children who have had intestinal worms are less likely to develop allergies such as asthma and hayfever. When worms in children in the 70's and 80's were routinely treated with medicine, the number of children developing respiratory allergies shot up.

A more intense study was carried out in South America and showed stark results.

So, don't worry if your child gets worms - it could well be helping their immune system target an actual threat, rather than a perceived threat such as dust or pollen.

You can get treatment from the chemist. The whole family needs to take it. You should also wash all bedding of the kid who has them and hoover and damp dust to get rid of the eggs. That always saw them off for us.

I was a thumb sucker and a nail biter and never had worms. My children have also never had worms (yet…)
Both my daughters have had nits once. Treated everyone else in the house but nobody else had them either time.

School is the usual place, same as with nits. The latter can also be picked up at the hairdresser. I’ve known several adults catch them there too.

With worms for our DC it was the fact they played in the woods area at his school. A class lesson on handwashing and teachers taking the whole class to the bathroom to wash hands after break improved matters immensely.

It is very normal, but I do think that where you live and the sort of exposures you have will impact that. I never had them growing up and they weren't a thing really that was ever raised as a concern - lived in an estate, fairly suburban, not much outdoor space. Dh grew up rurally on a farm, had worms so frequently that his mum was told just to give him a semi-regular dosing of worm treatment every few months. All his cousins had them regularly because they spent all their free time digging in mud and splashing in streams and around livestock and obviously other wormy children. This was in the 80s for both of us.