Recently I was chatting to friends who come to one of the clubs I attend, and several were expecting their grandchildren for Easter holiday. The joy of seeing the children is a little bit altered though, because so many of them, at least four families I spoke to, have grandchildren who are ‘allergic’ to just about everything.
“I can’t give them dairy or wheat” said one. “They are all vegetarian,” said another, and her youngest little person is about four. How does a four-year-old decide to be vegetarian? Another said, “I can’t do any of the food I usually do, I am not sure what we will eat!” I think the menu was carrots and potato… the only food allowed. Another scrupulously clean grandma had to make sure there was never a speck of dust in the house, so she was washing all the surfaces and vacuuming herself into oblivion, before they arrived. Because of the child’s allergy.
So much has been written about our world being too sterile, and the theory put forward that today children don’t come into contact with the wider world; pets are sanitised, and kept away; surfaces are so disinfected you could perform major surgery on them, so children do not become immune. Instead they become fragile beings with too many hang ups and an attitude that makes life difficult forever, neurosis looms large on the horizon. Grandparents feel like they are the aliens, and the purveyors of doom.
Well my germ-infested house has somehow managed to produce three healthy and active children. They are now 54, 56, and one nearly 58. They had normal things like measles and mumps, and chicken pox, and the odd sore throat. They ate everything, well apart from one who wasn’t too keen on tomatoes once. Even our daughter who was a bit picky ate all meats until she saw lambs gambolling and took lamb off the menu! Today, she is slim and fit and runs in regular marathons.
My children grew up with a slobbering and often mud-caked Labrador, called ‘Grotty’. They played cuddled and shared food with him. When outdoors they made horrible concoctions of garden produce and mud, they ate biscuits that had fallen on the floor. I made sure they always had a bath at night, and bedtime was an unbending rule, so they slept the full time they needed. If I said it was bedtime it was, and allowed no nonsense… Maybe except for holidays when there was no school and we bent the rules a little.
The three of them as babies had pureed fruit and vegetables at two months, with cereal, eggs and small amounts of meat before six months. By 10 months my middle child was eating proper meals with a spoon by himself, and the gradual inclusion of all foods, including eggs and peanut butter, worked without any problems, I can only say it worked for mine. The Plunket nurse in New Zealand had other ideas, but I did what I felt was right for us. I fed the first one for six months, the others a shorter time.
Where do we go from here? Do we let these cotton wool swamped children become a generation of frail human beings, or do we get a little tougher? Do we gradually start letting them become real children? Children, who play, get dirty, tumble on grass; playing outside means they come in hungry enough to eat good food… The allergy invasion has to stop, it has reached epic proportions.
I used to spend Saturday mornings filling the fridge with home-cooked meals. I was not the perfect mother, but just did as well as I could. It is pretty tough if you are working — I only worked part-time — so I do understand the challenges of today’s parents. Time is precious, children are precious, but making them hysterical about food is not a good recipe for life.