It’s been over three months since I saw “my” kids (nieces and nephews). I think that’s longer than I have gone since the first one was born, almost 13 years ago! I am going to have to see them soon, no matter what my risk level is. It would be bad for my mental health if I didn’t. The longer I go between visits, the more I miss. It’s the only time I ever suffer from FOMO. You can’t get back the time you don’t spend with kids, and they change so quickly.
As I have conversations with my family to figure out the things that would have to occur or not occur for all of us to be safest, I can’t help but recall how often I pick up whatever the kids have, usually ten times worse. It gets better after the age where it’s irresistible to pick them up and cuddle (for me that’s around five years old when they get taller and heavier and start to wiggle away) and they move from daycare to school.
Still, I wonder what makes adults get what the kids have but exponentially worse. I know I’m not the only one.
According to what I’ve read, adults getting kid illnesses but worse is actually pretty common for a few reasons. The gimme reason for chronic and autoimmune conditions is that our immune systems are not firing on all cylinders. Here are some others that make sense:
1. Little kids are walking Petri dishes. Kiddie immune systems are still developing. They haven’t had the exposure necessary to fight off many illnesses simply because they haven’t been alive long enough to have encountered them. They spend their days with other kids who have immune systems at the same stage of development so they pick up everything. Then they bring it all home to us. So thoughtful.
2. As usual, our immune systems are the enemy. In addition to our generally flawed immune responses, all the antibodies we have built up naturally and with vaccines kick into gear as soon as they recognize the invader, but since kid bodies are smaller, their responses are quicker and more efficient. Adult bodies feel the same symptoms, but because our responses are on a scale, it takes longer for treatments to take effect and for symptoms to cycle through.
3. Some of the things kids bring home are things your body has never seen. As we have discovered with coronavirus, there are plenty of diseases or strains of diseases that our bodies have never dealt with before. Even for the common stuff, maybe you managed to avoid it when you were a kid, but if your kid brings it home, your immune system is going to have its usual killing-a-fly-with-a-sledgehammer response while your Petri dish’s immune system will treat it like just another new [cold/flu/other].
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do to alleviate our misery when our kids give us their germs aside from the obvious – washing hands often and trying not to touch your face, washing clothes in hot water, etc. Sound familiar?
Since the new norm seems to be the old norm when dealing with kids (the only norm, really) we don’t have to change much of what we do already. I also start taking vitamin C before I go and I talk to the kids about not blowing in my face and covering coughs and sneezes with their arms. They know I always get sick. They also know I will risk it to see them. Because I love my little Petri dishes.