In article ,
Sacha wrote:

What? To make them wear shoes when running across a lawn? No it most
certainly is not. NOT if you think they might be stung and that is
avoidable. Not all children are allergic, some are. Some people
(children
included), like me, become more allergic the more they are stung. Think
about it. I can no more imagine watching our grand daughter run into
possible harm than fly to the moon.

What he said, and what I agred with - and still agree with - was:

"isolating children from pain entirely is equally bad for them."

But nobody was suggesting that. Keeping a child from being stung is common
sense.

If the child IS allergic to bee stings, or you have reason to believe
that it may be, then yes. Otherwise, think of the harm you are doing
by preventing the child going barefoot - and there is more than you
might realise.

A very similar thing happened with the late 20th century fetish for
hygiene - preventing infections is good, right? Well, recent research
indicates that doing that too thoroughly can lead to malfunctioning of
immune system development and is implicated in auto-immune diseases.
And I can assure you that those can be VERY nasty.

Some people think that these two things are related, and the increase
in allergies is caused by our artificial environments and, especially,
by not exposing children to such things as infections and bee stings
early enough and often enough. That is very speculative, though, and
I don't know the latest hypotheses.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.