Back in the day, moms made play dates with kids who had chicken pox, so their child could get it, get it over with, and not have to worry about it as an adult. But these are two very different illnesses and the same rules don't apply. Who knows if people are actually having these parties, but the CDC (center for disease control) strongly advises against these parties. They do however offer some tips to stay healthy, which is what we have hopefully been doing all along, such as frequent washing of our hands etc.
There has been a lot of media regarding the swine flu and personal feelings regarding getting vaccinated or not. The media loves to hype things up and make things bigger than they really are, so what you won't hear them saying is that the 'regular' flu has been the cause of many deaths for years, and that swine flu is no more than a different strain of the flu. For centuries there have been much worse illnesses that people have met with such as the black plague, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and more. So we need to keep our perspectives in check and realize this is nothing more than the flu with another name and we've been dealing with the flu for our entire lives.
Just because certain strains of the flu are out there doesn't mean any of us will catch them, so to expose your child on purpose to an illness is at the very least a cruel and awful thing to do. We should carry on as we had been doing in the years before we ever heard of swine flu and let nature take it's course. And instead of thinking about exposing children to a potentially serious illness, we should focus on keeping our children warm, fed, clothed and loved.
