The child going to kindergarten is a very important period for the whole family, it is a stage of psycho-social adaptation for both the child and the parents, but not least training of the child’s immune system. And if in the first days – weeks the emphasis is on emotional accommodation, when the child learns to stay for a short period without the mother (father, grandmother), to communicate with educators and the group of children, then the following period comes with a large load of respiratory infections, which puts the mother (father, grandmother) to a hard test.
The immune system, which allows us to deal with infections, grows and develops with the child. During the intrauterine period, when the future baby is in the mother’s womb, the mother transmits the immunoglobulins („immune cells”) to him through the blood, and after birth, if the infant is breastfed, already through the milk. This fact allows the child to resist infections in the first months of life. After the age of 6 months, when we start diversifying and the amount of breast milk the baby receives decreases, infections become more frequent, naturally, because children already they have to develop their own „immunity cells”.
Going to kindergarten, in a group of 15-20 children, each of whom is a carrier of certain viruses and bacteria in their nose, means that the child in very limited time to „get to know” all these viruses, and the immune system to develop „immunity cells” for the future. It is a „centuries” mechanism by which the immune system develops tolerance. Another method is vaccination, but this is reserved only for infections that have a high potential for severe complications, sometimes lifelong.
For this reason, parents, including grandparents, must arm themselves with a lot of patience and not refuse to go to kindergarten. The child should be kept at home only for the febrile period, sometimes a few extra days for recovery, but not for the entire cold period of the year.
As a rule, after the first year in kindergarten, these infections become rarer and the immune system all more trained.
