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Comment by monk_e_boy | Hacker News Reader

UK here. After we had a kid, they told us 'no peanuts and no honey' I was like, hm, whatever. I eat peanut butter and honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me. Turns out being a normal person doing normal things is now good advice.

My parents used to dip my dummy in whiskey when I was teething. Not sure where the medical community stands on this one.

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While allergies definitely seem to be about immune system training, there have been similar studies [1] about kids who eat dirt are less likely to have allergies in general, honey is different.

Honey is not an allergic issue, it's about the bodies ability to fend off botulism when the baby is less than a year. Their bodies are just not capable of dealing with that. Similar to kidney and liver development being require before giving kids ibprofrin or tylonol.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...

The kids eating dirt having fewer allegies is known as the Hygiene Hypothesis. Owning a dog also reduces allegies. Growing up with nerd friends, I remember my friends who lived in pristine sterile homes had the worst allergies, which became self-perpetuating as they had to stay in sterile environments to keep from aggravating their allegies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

Thank you for the honey exception. That's an imporant one I learned about with my first kid.

I grew to dislike alcohol/wine because my parents were constantly badgering me to have some of their homemade wine/grappa growing up. I certainly saw the opposite in the US where kids grow up kept strictly away from it, and then binge when they break free. As a result I'm probably going to offer it to my kid.

Careful with that if you raise your child in the US. Providing alcohol to a minor is a misdemeanor criminal offense in most states, even if you do it in your own home.

Most states (29/50) actually allow underage drinking at home with parental consent: http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

I think you are on the right track. This is nothing scientific but from personal observation, in Mediterranean countries (where there is much less stigma with alcohol, it's consumed in family environments and kids usually try it) there is less alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. In countries where the laws and societal customs restrict alcohol more, people have much more of a tendency to go overboard when they do drink.

For example, in Spain kids typically grow up buying drinks in shops, drinking them outside (the so-called "botellón") and partying until 5 or 6 AM from when they are like 15 or 16 (sometimes even at 13). It's considered to be a problem but most of the time nothing really serious happens, as they grow up knowing how to control themselves after they have drank too much and been taken home by their friends once or twice. When there are news about people jumping off balconies or doing similarly stupid things due to being dangerously drunk, they are almost inevitably British youngsters on holiday who aren't used to drinking in their country due to heavy taxation and restrictions, so their drinking goes completely out of hand when they suddenly get the chance to do what they never could before.

Not saying that kids getting drunk at 13 is OK, but the other extreme is definitely bad too. Encouraging kids to have their first contact with alcohol in a family environment rather than in a wild partying trip to Ibiza is definitely a good idea in my book.

I didn't drink until my early 20s, probably in part because when I was a kid my mum would mix white wine with orange juice as her preferred drink. If I found a glass of orange juice sitting in the kitchen, chances were it'd been 'poisoned' with wine. It wasn't until I tried bourbon and coke a lot later that I realised alcohol can taste good.

My grandmother was a smoker, and the story goes: she sat my mom and aunt down when they were in 8th/9th grade respectively, in the living room, and made them light up and smoke a cigarette each. To the end.

It was a sickening, mildy traumatic experience and as a result neither of them ever smoked again.

I'm unsure whether introducing other vices this way would have similar outcomes, but there's a lot to be said for simply removing the allure of secrecy and taboo.

It's because honey can cause infant botulism, not because of allergies. It's thought to be the cause of 1 in 10 SIDS cases.

I think you nail it. The general, beyond peanuts, advice is stop helicoptering over your kids, let them get dirty, let them interact with people, let them eat things. Exposure early is not a bad thing.

All this new advise of "don't do this, don't do that"... At least paying attention to the media, etc. has resulted in a rise in issues like peanut allergies which were not an issue 30+ years ago.

"I eat peanut butter and honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me. "

These are two very, very different things.

On the one hand, over-caution with common allergens (like PB) is annoying and heavy-handed and probably contributes to the problem because failing to expose children to these common allergens just serves to increase their sensitivity. I think you had a good instinct there and it mirrors my own behavior with regard to my children and what they eat, etc.

So far so good.

But babies (0-18 months) cannot be given honey. It has nothing to do with allergies. Honey contains C. botulinum which, depending on the age and strength of the child, can lead to infant botulism[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism#Infant_botulism

> Turns out being a normal person doing normal things is now good advice.

oh come on, there's nothing here supporting that overly-broad, emotive statement.

My parents used to dip my dummy in whiskey when I was teething

honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that

We might have just found a correlation here.

Well, I know a lot of families who used whiskey for teething. Haven't heard any harm in it. The relatives who didn't seem to get less sleep.

> honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me

Great way to give your kid botulism.

I heard the same but only for the first year.

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