by Whitney Barthel posted in Parenting

I don?t know about you but I feel like there was always a certain stigma that came with things like head lice while growing up. Because, you know, those kinds of things only happen to ?dirty kids.?

Then you grow up, have kids, and learn about other ickies. Ickies that even the school nurse doesn?t go around checking the entire school for. Things like pin worms, ringworm, and any other kind of worm. They all sound terrible, don?t they"
You think, That will never happen to us. We are clean. We shower every day and only associate with the ?right kind? of families.
Then, it does happen to us. And, we are forced to drag our pride and bruised ego off into the corner like a dog with its tail between its legs. When I was in middle school I read a World War II era book that introduced me to the condition of ringworm. The girl in the book was denied entry into a boat that would save her from the Holocaust because she was missing patches of hair where her scalp was ringworm-ridden.
I thought, Sweet Jesus! How horrible. Worms crawling in and out of your head, eating your hair!

My vision of ringworm was totally off. Thank goodness, because just a few weeks ago half my kids were getting over it.
Yep. It turns out you can't good-mom your way to preventing ringworm.
No matter how clean you are and how many preventative measures you take, your kids will still do things like eat dirt, take their diapers off to smear poop everywhere, and touch o...