• You put your right had in, you put your left hand in, and you shake it all about. I’m talking about the way kids wash their hands. Usually it’s a quick rinse, if you’re lucky, with water barely covering their fingertips. Often it can more harm than good, by allowing more germs to grow and spread in a warm and damp environment then if they hadn’t wash their hands at all.

    If you could take 45 seconds, of your time, to demonstrate proper hand washing to your children, you could reduce illness in your family by a considerable amount. They may fight you on this but 45 seconds out of their day, is probably going to save them days of being laid up in bed.

    The technique is easy:

    1. Rinse hands with water (any temperature).

    2. Turn off water (it is a precious resource after all).

    3. Lather and wash, by rubbing your hands together to create friction, for 20-30 seconds (I told my children to hum Happy Birthday if they don’t feel like counting, as that song is approximately 20 seconds).

    4. Get in between fingers, all sides of the hands and fingertips. Try to get soap under the nails too.

    5. Rinse and dry.

    There is a neat product, Glo Germ, made out of which chemicals I have no idea?  It is a goo you wash your hands with and then the remnants are seen with a black light. It is amazing to see how many repeated hand washings are required to eliminate the glow in the dark specks, which attach to dirt. After trying this goo myself, I can tell you that I am forever impacted in how thoroughly I wash my hands.