We might have washed the kids’ hands... at a push

RELAXED Young mum June with her own girls Sarah and Gillian. Inset, today Sarah’s mum June Murray, 55, is a restaurant supervisor and lives with her husband Raymond in Kinross. She also has a younger daughter Gillian, 28. Hygiene around kids has changed an awful lot since I brought up my girls. I recently thought about buying my granddaughters Ellie and Holly a pyjama case, then realised they only ever put their nighties in the washing bin so a pyjama case would be completely redundant.

And when I gave Sarah and Dale really nice tea towels for their first wedding anniversary, Sarah looked at them and said, ‘What do I do with these?’

She puts everything in the dishwasher so has no need of them. I still have dishcloths but wash them every night and I don’t see anything wrong with that. But whenever Sarah’s at my house and sees my cloths, she rolls her eyes a lot.

When I was a young mum, I washed my daughters’ hair once or twice a week – we didn’t know any kids who had theirs washed every night like Ellie and Holly. And if my girls dropped something like a whole biscuit from the table, I swooped down to pick it up and popped it back on the table so they could eat it.

A few seconds on the floor won’t pick up any germs, I don’t like to see wasted food and my girls never suffered. Sarah was never sick.

Whenever I’ve taken Ellie and Holly to the safari park, I’ve been amazed to see hand sanitiser everywhere. When my girls were young we took them to an animal petting zoo then sat down to enjoy a picnic. We hadn’t a thought for sanitising our hands – although we might have washed them, at a push. Now my granddaughters have hand sanitiser in their lunch boxes.

Sometimes I worry Sarah is making life hard for herself because she’s constantly cleaning and doing laundry. At the same time, I’m full of admiration because her house is always pristine, whereas two minutes after Ellie and Holly arrive at my house, it looks as if a tractor’s driven through it.

But I do feel today’s kids are too clean and that’s why there are so many colds and bugs because kids live in such sterile environments they can’t build up their immunity. There never seems to be a week when my granddaughters’ friends aren’t off school or nursery for 48 hours to get over some sort of sickness.

When I was bringing up my kids, I don’t remember hearing about superbugs in hospitals and that was before all this over-cleaning carry-on. When matrons were in charge of hospital wards, pride and strict standards kept the wards spick and span. And I’m sure they had no hand sanitiser and plenty of cloths.