Things We Don't Worry About at Home Sweet Home

Bare Feet
because it best supports children by developing their muscles and ligaments, increases the strength of the foot arch, and improves proprioception (awareness of where we are in the space around us) while contributing to good posture. Toddlers stumble less barefoot because they keep their head up and bare feet helps them to negotiate the sensations on the ground allowing eyes to be forward not down. Children's feet conform to the form and structural function of a shoe - which is simply not desirable unless we want very little feet that look like slices of pizza. Home Sweet Home is aware that bare feet can pick up splinters and gravel on a nature based playground, and are mindful of encouraging footwear worn for protection when using tricycles. Soapy footbaths at night with a firm loofah can support clean, healthy feet.


Dirty Clothes
because children need to play as free from adult constructed restrictions as possible, and dirty clothes are not unsafe. HSH recommends going to Goodwill and buying 10 t-shirts for $10 and letting that be the school uniform. Pop them in the washing machine with a mild cleanser after each use and let any permanent stains tell the story of a happy, engaged child at play. Smocks will be offered to children, but HSH thinks smocks are silly and only keeps the paint off the torso (Did Pollock wear a smock? Picasso?); the task of putting smocks on delays a child's initiative to transfer his big idea into a representational Art piece and Home Sweet Home values creative genius over fashion.


Enterobius or pin worms, because it's not terribly dangerous and it's so highly common that probably 50% of children are walking around with them undiagnosed. When to follow up: if your child becomes a restless night sleeper and/or is doing a lot of heinie scratching, especially under the clothes. How to follow up: keep fingernails short, keep hand washing thorough and after every observed fingers to bottom scratching incident, and see a pediatrician for diagnosis and treatment. Home Sweet Home has embedded handwashing routines into the Flow-of-the-Day, including by asking parents to supervise their children's handwashing during morning transition and again when picking-up before they leave the preschool at night. This will keep our collective HSH germ soup out of the family and the family germ soup out of Home Sweet Home.


Our intrepid Board Rep Sharisse (Brody's mom) contributes this article to round out our understanding!

http://www.nwcn.com/news/health/Playing-in-dirt-may-make-you-smarter-94845759.html