Summer Hygiene for Your Kids

Holidays are here to stay and so are infections! Ensure your child follows these summer hygiene tips to prevent illnesses from hampering his fun-filled vacation.

While summer vacations are a time for fun and play, this is also the period when illnesses abound. Germs thrive and spread due to the heat and humidity leading to ailments like seasonal flu, gastroenteritis, jaundice, typhoid, skin rashes and food poisoning.

The best way to protect your child from these illnesses is by teaching him to follow basic personal hygiene practices. Also, ensure he does not drink unsafe water or consume food prepared in unsanitary conditions.

Hand hygiene

The website www.healthline.com advises parents to ensure that their children wash their hands regularly, especially before eating food and after going to the toilet. They should also wash hands after touching animals and if they have been around someone who is ill. Most infections, especially colds and gastroenteritis, are caught when kids put their unwashed hands, which have germs on them, into their mouth. Good hand hygiene alone can reduce the rate of kids falling sick by more than 50%.

Quick tip: You can use a homemade handwash. Wet the hands, sprinkle on baking soda and rub around on hands just like you would soap before washing off.

Tackling body odour

Body odour is caused by chemicals in sweat and wearing unwashed clothes, such as underwear and socks.

Quick tip: If you want to avoid chemical deodorants, try lime juice, says homeremediesfor.com. Tell your child to wash, particularly under the arms, with lime juice applied to a damp cloth. Leave it on for 5 minutes and wash off. If you have sensitive skin, dilute the juice before use.

Daily bath

Bathing regularly and wearing clean clothes are a given to maintain good hygiene especially in summer. When puberty arrives, personal hygiene becomes even more important. For a young girl or boy, this means taking more time and care cleaning one's body, especially the sexual organs, says www.encyclopedia.com.

Quick tip: A tip from www.neem-products.com: Boil neem leaves in water and add to the bath water. This will protect the skin from fungal infections and soothe irritated skin.

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Author: Aruna Raghuram