In Reply to: one good thing to come from your posted by chickchili on Thursday, 31. August 2006 at 17:44 Bali Time:
many years ago before so many inoculations were around it used to be the done thing that if any Mum's heard that a local child either from school or the neighbourhood had any of the childhood infectious diseases such as chicken pox,measles, german measles etc they would take you to the child's house on purpose so that you would get it! It was a rather widespread practice to do this.
The Mother's of the day used to say it was better off for all the kids to get these infections over & done with at the same time & the teachers also encouraged this.It was especially a real big deal back then if there were any girls in the family & your Mum heard a local child had chicken pox.The daughters would be rushed off to the child's house because the Mum's said "It's better to get this as a child because it would be horrible for you to get it when you grew up & were having & baby & got it then " I think fear was a driving factor for Mother's of the time.
Kids could never understand why their Mother's or Teachers would want to get them sick on purpose but it was the practice of the day.Thank heavens that times have certainly changed for the better with medical advancements.
The strange thing is that even with this flurry of rushing kids around to infectious kids houses the Mum's would be disappointed because half the time you wouldn't get the infection anyway.I personally didn't get chicken pox until I was 22 in spite of the fact that I had been exposed to it numerous times as a child.Strange how that worked out.