Hand washing

Global Hand Washing Day is on 15th of October and it is a perfect opportunity for parents to revise the hand hygiene basics with your entire family. This is also to create awareness and teach importance of basic hygiene for kids and as well as adults.

Hand washing and other good health and hygiene habits (like cleaning teeth, brushing hair, and taking regular baths or showers) should be built into children’s routines as early as possible. In simple words explain your children why to wash hands and what happens if they don’t wash their hands. Tell them how it hurts their little tummy, causes runny nose, fever and how they are going to miss all the fun at school and with friends.

Tell your children to wash hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds or more, especially:

• before and after eating
• before and after handling food
• after using the toilet
• after playing outdoors
• after touching animals
• after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
• before and after being around anyone who is ill.

To ensure good hand hygiene, tell your children to follow this method when washing their hands:

1. Wet your hands.

2. Put some soap in your hands.

3. Rub your hands together with the soap. Be sure to clean the palms and the backs of your hands, and interlace your fingers to make sure that you wash between the fingers. Also, ensure that you clean under your fingernails as well.

4. Rinse your hands with clean water.

5. Dry your hands with a clean towel.

To parents: Children are not mature enough to understand how long they have to hold their hands under running water. They may try to escape the cleaning process because they don’t understand why they have to hold their hands so long (remember for children one minute is long ).

• Sing a song together that lasts for 20 seconds or more. ‘Happy birthday’ is a good option!
• Lightly sprinkle a small amount of glitter on their hands and ask them to wash it off – it takes a surprisingly long time!
• Let your child pick out a special bar of soap – maybe in a unique shape or with a lovely fragrance. You can also provide them with a bottle of liquid soap featuring their favourite cartoon character.
• It might be helpful to give your child a small plastic toy to wash at the same time – it’s a bit more of an interesting way of keeping little hands immersed in warm soapy suds for 20 seconds!
• Stand with your children and sing the song along and use the same hand soap and wash your hands.

See more here: https://www.omo.co.za

Image credit: https://www.needpix.com/photo/download/816357/ (Free for commercial use)