I have succumbed to posting on AIBU!

Just to add into the mix, that I (who started this thread) have been diagnosed with COPD, so could be deemed to be particularly vulnerable to various viruses etc, but still don't feel the need to use antibacterial wipes on the handles of supermarket trolleys!

Wash your hands thoroughly before eating, and before preparing food, use separate boards for certain food items, and you should be fine!

I do however worry about situations such as Beau described, where parents are going OTT, to the extent of unrealistically trying to keep their child germ free.

I agree. I was brought up in a home where dirt wasn't much bothered about - my Mum never even insisted we washed our hands before eating and didn't supervise whether we washed our hands after going to the toilet either. I hardly ever suffered a serious illness as a child.

With my own children I did try to get them to wash their hands after using the loo and before eating, but I wasn't strict about the latter. Like me, they were seldom ill with anything serious as children. Colds, of course, but when half the school seemed to go down with stomach bugs, my three didn't catch them. I had a friend who bleached and cleaned often, and whose children caught every stomach bug that went around.

I'm happy to see that my daughter in law isn't obsessed with cleanliness either - my granddaughter often gets quite mucky, playing, and nobody stresses about her dirty hands going in her mouth. She isn't yet two and, of course, really hates being cleaned up after meals, never mind trying to wash her hands before she eats! A quick wipe is all you can manage.

I find it hard to believe now , but if we were out with Mum & fell over, got a bit dirty etc, she would moisten her hanky ( yes I do really mean spit !) and clean the injured or mucky area. We would probably be arrested now if we did this?

By the way a great topic Phoenix ?

When my children were young we lived in the same street as a couple with two boys, one just under 4 and one coming up for two years old. The wife was obsessed with germs, cleaning everything with bleach.

Coming back from shopping I saw a crowd of neighbours outside the house and was asked to help. I found the eldest upstairs collapsed and blue, and despite working on him with a neighbour it was obvious he had gone. Ambulance came and took him away, we took his mother to hospital and sat with her while they told her he had died. Dreadful day.

Two months later I saw the mum being shepherded out of the house in tears and thought at last she had broken (she had seemed almost unaffected afterwards). Then I saw the ambulance. Their second son was rushed to hospital where he also died. Post mortems revealed a bug which would not normally have killed a child, but they had no resistance.

What an awful story B9.
My husband is, or was , a cleaning fanatic. One day he made some kind of mixture of bleach etc to mop the kitchen floor.
He had terrible breathing problems and ended up in hospital overnight.
He's still a bit OCD, but more cautious now.

You have my sympathies Fennel! Bleach mixed with other products can be lethal, and even explosive!

That would have been a problem with the children’s immune system for both kids to have died, nothing to do with the fact that the mother liked to clean