Hardening children - advice from Dr. Komarovsky. When to start and how to harden a child with weak immunity: air and sun baths, water treatments and physical activity Hardening babies according to Komarovsky

The most effective way to strengthen children's immunity is hardening newborns. There is no need to fear that such radical actions will harm the child - on the contrary, the technique can be started from birth, because adaptability to the environment in infants is at an advanced stage. high level. Modern scientists have proven that children are born already hardened, but parents knock down the body’s defense mechanism established by nature. Sterile food, creating greenhouse conditions in the apartment, closed windows and several layers of clothing do their job, so you shouldn’t be surprised why the baby picks up.

To harden a newborn, there is no need to set aside special time for this. The best helpers in strengthening the immune system are natural conditions, and hardening implies a gradual and controlled change in them. The period of doing exercises, napping during the day, bathing the child in the evening, and even changing clothes for a walk is quite suitable for the procedure. Hardening has a beneficial effect on:

resistance to colds;
mechanisms of adaptation to the environment;
circulatory system;
metabolism;
state of the nervous system;
sleep quality;
appetite.

Hardened newborns develop much faster than their peers who grow up in greenhouse conditions.

Before starting an experiment on your own child, you need to consult a specialist or be examined by a pediatrician. It is strictly forbidden to use the technique when:

acute respiratory infections and acute respiratory viral infections;
heart diseases;
reduced hemoglobin;
emotional and nervous tension in a newborn;
various stages of exhaustion;
problems with the gastrointestinal tract;
sleep disorders.

The presence of diseases must be excluded only pediatrician, and not the parents, since all responsibility lies with them.

It is impossible to harden children “in a rush” - such an approach will only harm their health and will not bring any benefit. Even before the child is born, parents must decide whether they will harden him or not, so as not to delay the process.

The systematic nature of the technique implies daily implementation of procedures.
Temperature conditions should gradually change so as not to cause stress or pain in the baby.
It is important to monitor the child’s reaction to the next procedure. If it is inadequate, hardening is stopped at this stage. To attract a newborn to the process, he needs to be lured with a bright toy, affectionate stroking, goodwill and a song.

Basic methods

It is not for nothing that there has been a saying for a long time that air, sun and water are best friends person. It is these natural factors that help strengthen the child’s immunity.

Expert opinion of Dr. Komarovsky

The hardening method according to Dr. Komarovsky is based on the same principles of a natural procedure. The famous pediatrician is convinced that no preparatory measures are required for a newborn, since nature itself has taken care of the important functions of the body. Therefore, parents can simply not extinguish them:

Walking should be done in any weather, even with a minimum of time spent. The contrasting temperatures found in nature will only benefit the baby. Grass, earth and air have a much better effect on a child than an enclosed space and synthetic carpets. It is imperative to ventilate the house, especially if your child is sick.
The lifestyle should become active first of all for the parents, and the children themselves will catch up to the established bar. You shouldn't dress your newborn outdoors like a cabbage head - you need to use common sense and be able to adapt to weather conditions.
It is necessary to feed the baby on demand, and not when the mother thinks that he is hungry. Such problems do not arise with infants, but growing children begin to refuse food. And this is quite normal if the child does not have time to get hungry.
Swimming every night can become very in a good way hardening the baby if you do everything correctly.

By ensuring your baby is properly active, you don’t have to worry about his good appetite. Komarovsky is sure that a healthy baby is thin, active and always a little hungry. Hardening does not mean the complete disappearance of colds, but a child with a strong immune system will get sick much less often and recover faster.

Quite often the child’s health status is completely unsatisfactory for his parents. No, it’s not that he’s sick all the time, but he gets sick too often. The local doctor comes, once again diagnoses another acute respiratory infection, and prescribes treatment. We are treating. Helps. A couple of weeks later he sniffles again.

The conditions are almost ideal - our own children's room, toys, well-fed, clothed, shod, the house is warm and no drafts, a wonderful kindergarten... He still gets sick. Negative parental emotions gradually accumulate. A mother is in conflict with her boss about receiving another sick leave to care for her child. Dad is tired of all this too; what has it come to - they already know him by sight in the pharmacy next door to the house! Need to do something!

So what to do? The answer seems obvious - harden. But as? Where to begin? What kind of thing is this, hardening?

Let's start with the definition of the term.

So, HARDENING - increasing the body's resistance to the adverse effects of a number of physical environmental factors (for example, reduced or elevated temperature, water, etc.) through systematic dosed exposure to these factors.

Our tasks completely different.

Firstly, explain the essence of hardening, its goals and ways to achieve them.

Secondly, to ensure that, when conducting experiments on children that bear the conventional but proud name of “hardening procedures,” adults are aware of their actions.

It is quite obvious that many external factors can cause diseases that are called “ colds" To the most common reasons“colds” include, first of all, hypothermia, both general (dressed poorly, it’s cold in the apartment) and local (for example, got your feet wet or drank cold lemonade). On the one hand, the cold-disease relationship is completely obvious, on the other hand, it is completely incomprehensible.

Looking around, watching animals - dogs that run through November puddles, crows that sit on wires in the bitter January frost - you involuntarily begin to feel a certain human inferiority, a certain isolation from nature. Is it really possible to pay for more developed brains with an absolute inability to live according to the laws of Nature? No, it is quite possible to explain the connection between a cold and extreme physical influences - falling into an ice hole, for example. But why does illness occur only because there was a breath of air from an open window, only because snow got into your shoes, only because you lost your hat at school and walked the five-minute walk home with your head uncovered? Why?

Answers to these questions should be sought in early childhood. After all, a newborn human baby has an innate ability to adapt to environmental conditions. The stability of these conditions - for example, constant and not at all low temperature air, warm water, sterile food, careful elimination of contact with moving air (wind) - leads to the fact that the innate adaptation mechanisms are turned off as unnecessary. To our great, great regret, it is the stability of external physical factors that is almost the main manifestation parental love. What does this lead to? Moreover, physical factors that are not at all extreme for a person - moving air, called the terrible word “draft”, or the temperature in the room +17 ° C - become a source of increased danger.

Thus, a very important conclusion should be made: a newborn baby does not need hardening . It is tempered by Nature itself, by millennia of natural selection. You just need to organize the care of the baby in such a way that the natural adaptation mechanisms do not fade away. Not only do not avoid, but consciously create temperature contrasts of both air and water, use all opportunities for maximum duration of contact with natural factors of Nature, in other words, walk more and in any weather. Just don't need extremism! There is no need to plunge children into an ice hole, there is no need to keep them in the sun for hours, and there is absolutely no need to run barefoot in the snow.

Nevertheless, natural education, based on maintaining natural abilities, comes into deep contradiction with both domestic pediatrics and the domestic mentality. The situation is close to a dead end, if only because 99% of moms and dads get sick after sitting in a draft or getting their feet wet. It is not surprising that these factors are clearly regarded as dangerous, and the child will be protected from such threats in every possible way.

The problem of hardening itself, as a rule, arises precisely in those families where children are desired and loved, where parents are ready to make all sorts of sacrifices and personal restrictions, just so that the child feels good.

Hardening should always be seen as an attempt to regain what was lost, an attempt to jump on a departing train, an attempt to reconsider traditional parental ideas about what is bad and what is good for a child.

The above should be considered as a kind of theoretical basis that allows us to understand that the main task of parents is not to harden the child. The main thing is to make sure that the child does not need hardening.

But this is all theory. We have a fact: constant colds. Let's admit: we were wrong. Ready to improve.

Where to begin?

To begin with, understand: any person - no matter whether it is an adult or a child - is constantly influenced by a very specific set of external influences. These impacts can be conditionally divided into two groups. The first is natural factors: the famous sun, air and water, sung in songs and fairy tales. The second is factors of civilization: place of residence, household chemicals, schooling, TV, clothing, transport, etc., etc.

The suppression of innate resistance to natural influences that are completely normal for the human body, which has arisen as a result of inadequate upbringing, can be completely eliminated. To do this, you need very little - fundamentally change your lifestyle, make it natural.

The natural way of life provides for priority contact with the above-mentioned natural factors and maximum limitation of contacts with the “harmful things of civilization.” It is this way of existence that awakens the adaptation mechanisms inherent in a person. The logical consequence is a manifold increase in the body’s resistance, a decrease in both the frequency and severity of diseases.

The lifestyle of our children, especially those living in cities, in the vast majority of cases is not natural. Inactivity. Almost constant stay indoors - school, homework, hours of vigil in front of the TV or computer, a children's room with a bunch of toys. Feeding that is not comparable to real energy costs, excess household chemicals.

Readers, of course, may well object: they say, not every child has his own room with a bunch of toys, and not every parent can afford an excess of food, and not all children spend hours doing their homework. That's how it is. But the whole paradox lies precisely in the fact that not having excess weight Losers from low-income families, as a rule, do not need hardening!

Let's now consider the main components natural image lives that are highly desirable for adults and absolutely obligatory for children, especially in those everyday situations when the family council considers the issue that it is time to toughen up the child.

Physical activity. Walk to school or maybe take the bus one stop? Watch a movie or play football? What is generally healthier - chess or tennis? On Sunday, the whole family does general cleaning, developing work skills, or on Sunday, the whole family goes into nature, and does general cleaning in two evenings on weekdays? Do we need to answer these questions? Do I need to explain that it is better to exercise physical activity under open air, and not between the floor and ceiling?
Cloth. Doesn't interfere with movement. The amount is moderate, since sweating causes colds more often than hypothermia.
Nutrition. Appetite - as the main criterion for the appropriateness of food intake in general and as an equivalent of energy consumption in particular. If he doesn’t want to eat, it means he hasn’t spent the proper amount of energy (on maintaining body temperature, on the motor activity we have already mentioned).

A completely special issue is visiting children's groups (school, kindergarten). It is clear that it is easier for a kindergarten teacher to refer to “bad weather” and not leave the room than, firstly, to dress and undress everyone and, secondly, to then listen to complaints from Seryozha’s mother - the boy got sick because it was damp.

School is a completely separate issue. We all unanimously accepted the fact that school is a source of knowledge. What about your health? After all, the well-being of our people is not so great that everyone has exercise equipment, swimming pools and tennis courts at home. We can only hope for school. But it was not there…

Why is math four times a week and physical education two? Poor gyms with crumbling ceilings, what kind of exercise equipment, we could at least have a couple of new volleyballs! 90 minutes a week for physical activity and 20 minutes of these 90 are roll call, “be equal”, “at attention”, “pay off for the first or second”. Botany, natural history and geography without leaving the classroom! Additional classes. The amount of homework is such that a conscientious attitude to study can undermine even the best health.

Wait a minute, the impatient reader will exclaim, our topic is “hardening”! What does hardening have to do with it?

Very much to do with it, because It is precisely hardening that people often try to make as a substitute for a natural way of life.

Classic situation: nice girl Lenochka is an excellent student. She reads a lot and loves cartoons, helps her mother wash the dishes, and does extra work English language, and on Sundays a music teacher comes to the house (last year, grandfather bought a piano with his saved two-year pension). Lenochka has a lot of toys and books, three diplomas, chronic tonsillitis, adenoids, low hemoglobin, allergies to oranges and chocolate. Over the winter, she suffered from acute respiratory infections five times and bronchitis once. Lenochka’s dad was the first to conclude that the child needed to be hardened, and was supported at the family council (five votes in favor, the mother-in-law abstained). There was even a mass-printed brochure “Hardening” in the house. They decided to start with dousing. The booklet had a table showing what temperature to start with and how to reduce the temperature. Every day (before going to bed) Lenochka was doused with water - they started at 34 °C, every week the water temperature was reduced by 1 °C, they reached 30 °C, but in the class everyone had the flu, and the book says: in case of illness, increase the temperature, again returned to 34 °C... In principle, hardening turned out to be very simple - spend about ten minutes a day on additional water procedures.

The described course of action is very typical and, most importantly, on the one hand, it is absolutely harmless for the child, and on the other hand, it is very convenient for parents. Without changing anything in general and spending a maximum of 15-20 minutes a day on hardening procedures, adults and, at first glance, quite reasonable people are deeply convinced that they are strengthening the child.

Let's go back to theoretical basis hardening Some physical factor, such as a draft, causes colds. If this factor is constant, first short-term (dosed), and then longer, then the body will get used to it (draft) and will not react painfully. From theory - a practical way of hardening: today we will sit for 20 seconds near an open window, tomorrow - a minute, the day after tomorrow - two minutes, ideally - in three months we will sleep with the window open. Wet feet are a disease. Let's pour some warm water into the bath and jump for two or three minutes before going to bed. The next day we’ll make the water a little colder and jump a little longer. Ideally, in six months we will be running through puddles in slippers.

The child does not go out for a walk for weeks, does not take off his hats and woolen socks, eats with coaxing, sits for hours in front of the TV, but before going to bed he is doused (wiped down) with water and goes to bed with a feeling of deep satisfaction.

It is precisely this theory and precisely these practical actions that hardening is introduced into our daily life.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, “hardening procedures” do not bring any benefit or harm to the child, but have a huge benefit for the nervous system of the parents.

Hardening is a big fat cross on the conscience of mom and dad - they say, we did everything we could.

So, don't harden it? Harden, but correctly and Hardening should not be understood as short-term dosed exposure to the sun, air and water, but as a fundamental correction of lifestyle. Do not start with rubbing and dousing, or opening the window for 20 seconds. Start with solving global issues: daily routine, intensity of training, food, sleep, children's room, clothing, sports.

Once and for all, define certain rules that must be followed: walk in any weather and encourage physical activity in every possible way, never force you to eat, minimize contact with household chemicals, provide the opportunity to dress yourself (choose the number of things yourself). If the child does not recover from illness, decide on additional educational loads (music, foreign languages). Excessive knowledge and poor health do not make a person happy. Tidy up the children's room, throw out dust accumulators, wet cleaning every day. Do not dose fresh air, but dose TV, dose lessons, dose checkers, chess and tic-tac-toe. Give not toys and chocolates, give fresh air - not from a window, but in the forest, flowers - not in a vase, but in a field, water - in a river, and not from a water supply.

Only this way of life can make a child happy. And the practical implementation of such actions requires from parents not only desire, but also time. This is much more difficult and troublesome than wiping it with warm water for five minutes a day.

The direct connection between the child’s health and the parents’ ability to find time to strengthen this very health seems obvious. But we have what we have - a sad environment, a low level of material well-being, a constant search for a means of subsistence, and poor health among the parents themselves. It’s easy to say: “all my free time is for walking.” You must have free time. It's easy to say: "a cool shower in the morning." You must have hot water - without hot water it is difficult to make cool water, only cold water can be obtained. The hand does not rise to ventilate a room in which even without ventilation it is +15 ° C.

The list of reasons that interfere with hardening can be continued, but there is no longer any strength left to put up with childhood illnesses, and the desire to do at least something intensifies every day. An important argument in favor of the need for action is that a child’s illness itself requires time and considerable resources (medicines, diet, financial losses due to the inability to go to work). So, specific recommendations, long-awaited answers to the eternal question “what to do?”

Understand that there are two options. The first option is relatively passive - lifestyle correction. We have already determined what, how and in what direction to adjust. Let us note right away that such changes are absolutely sufficient for the gradual return of lost health. The second option is active. Lifestyle changes plus some additional activities (those hardening procedures) allow you to regain what you have lost much faster.

Start with physical activity. Wake up an hour earlier than usual and go for a run in any weather. Don't run on the spot in the room, but in the fresh air! We ran for 5-10 minutes (we’re not in a hurry, calmly, no records for speed or distance), stopped, another 5-10 minutes - a set of elementary gymnastic exercises (waved our arms, twisted our pelvis, jumped, squatted) and ran home. Total - maximum 30 minutes. At home - water treatments, shower or pour warm water from a ladle (while dad was running, mom heated the water), brushed teeth. We had breakfast. Let's go to school (kindergarten). We gradually increase the distance and time of jogging, complicate gymnastic exercises, and reduce the amount of clothing.

The described option Only laziness can get in the way. There are simply no other justifiable motives. It can be assumed (although I don’t really want to) that parents cannot afford a day off in nature and walks with the child after work. But you can and should carve out an hour a day in the morning. During this hour the child will receive a harmonious set of influences: own physical activity + water and fresh air + communication with a beloved parent. The author guarantees that by finding the willpower to wake up an hour earlier every day, within a month you will feel changes for the better - not only in relation to your child’s health, but also in relation to your own health!

When carrying out any hardening measures, you should strictly observe three main principles:

1) systematicity - once you’ve started, don’t back down, don’t look for a reason to miss today;

2) gradualism - smooth increase in intensity and duration of impacts;

3) accounting individual characteristics - age, psychological mood of the child himself, concomitant diseases, household factors.

Hardening procedures should bring pleasure to the child. It always makes sense to focus on those options of action that the child himself strives for. For example, he likes to walk barefoot. Very a good option hardening - parents just have to remember to be gradual and systematic.

Please note: hardening helps prevent only those diseases that are associated with the adverse effects of physical environmental factors. Hardening in no way can reduce the incidence of infectious diseases: if in kindergarten chickenpox or a flu epidemic has begun - he will “safely” fall ill, like the rest, “not hardened”. But it is hardening that can greatly reduce the severity and duration of diseases, the frequency and likelihood of complications.

I emphasize again The main thing.

The child does not need hardening.

the child needs a natural, harmonious lifestyle.

Maximum physical activity, maximum possible stay in the fresh air, a sufficient minimum of clothing, a clean, cool children's room are tens of times more important and expedient than any gymnastics, douches and rubdowns. The justice of this particular state of affairs is often realized by parents too late, when supposed love, supposed care and supposed care bear fruit in the form of a whole bunch of illnesses.

Hardening is an attempt to contrast the strength of our body with weather changes. A normal person should not get sick from walking barefoot, from a draft, or from eating ice cream. If we gave birth normal child, then he should not be afraid of an open window.

There is no creature that is afraid of moving air, there is no child that is afraid of walking barefoot. But keep in mind that sitting on the floor with your bare butt is dangerous because the butt is not designed to sit on a cold floor. But human feet are designed to immediately close the skin vessels in the foot at the slightest contact with cold so that there is no heat transfer.

sun air and water are our best friends

Look at a child's foot. Heel color bright red, while the foot is cool. What does this mean? The body knows how to regulate heat exchange. The leg has excellent blood circulation - it is bright red, but at the same time it is cold. This suggests that the body has closed the blood vessels of the skin so as not to lose heat. Feet are designed to walk on cold surfaces.

But people often try to translate the ability to walk in the cold into the ability to sit in the cold, and this is incorrect in principle. What the leg is capable of, the butt is not capable of at all. The butt is the largest, thickest piece of meat that is located between the ground and the kidneys, which protects the kidney from hypothermia. There is no need to sit on a cold floor; the body loses heat and becomes hypothermic locally. And you can walk barefoot, but this should be done when the child learns to walk, and not when you have been doing stupid things for 5 years and then decide to take off the child’s shoes.

By hardening we can prevent diseases caused by harmful weather conditions, but we cannot do anything about the viruses that come in winter. Hardening will not save anyone from viral infections. But hardened people tolerate the disease much easier, because their heart and blood vessels work well.

Most adults are convinced that hardening is a one-time event. They believe that hardening is certain procedures, such as walking barefoot, jumping in cold water and that’s it. In fact, hardening is a way of life. Hardening is a normal, full life when we are not afraid of cold feet, moving air and ice cream. Before you start hardening, you need to understand what hardening is. Hardening is not 15 minutes of watering or dousing, it is a lifestyle correction. You are tired of being sick, you want to start toughening up. First start living like a human being. First, stop forcing your child to eat. Take him away from the TV and go for a walk with him. Stop wrapping him up, because children get sick not because they are cold, but because they sweat. The main thing you need to understand is that the object being hardened should have fun.

It is important to understand that a person is normal look inhabiting this earth. Imagine that a human family comes to a watering hole, and someone specially heats the water. It sounds absurd. Cold entering the mouth is one of the the best ways prevention of respiratory diseases, strengthening local immunity.

Contents of the article:

Hardening methods

Method for hardening the throat: 3 times a day, half a teaspoon of ice cream - hold in your mouth, count to 10, then swallow. After 5 days we increase the dose by as much as 2 times. The next method is to freeze the juice into ice cubes and let it soak. Just don’t pour the juice completely into the ice tray, but fill it about a third full.

In our country there is a sad tradition - if a child gets sick with the window closed, then the child is to blame. And if you get sick while the window is open, then the one who opened the window is to blame. And no one wants to be guilty. We also have a problem in our family - my grandmother. My grandmother has the same attitude towards hardening as I have towards ballroom dancing. In August, at a temperature of +35, she rushes to close all the windows, screaming at the draft, and then they wrap up the child. But ask the question - what is more important to you: the health of the child or the opinion of the grandmother. The answer is obvious. Therefore, you must come to an agreement with your grandmother.

Hardening with cold water

I would like to draw attention to the topic of Epiphany bathing. If you spend a whole year doing stupid things, if you force your child to eat for a whole year, if your child doesn’t go out for walks, if you treat every sneeze with a bunch of pills, then you are not doing anything pleasing to God. And you won’t be able to atone for your sins by lowering your child into the hole once. Be a normal parent every day. When after Epiphany bathing you feel a surge of strength and good spirits, you tell everyone about it. But when the child falls ill after this, people prefer to remain silent. And doctors are faced with this. Always be normal parents, and don’t try to put a tick on your conscience by lowering your child into the hole for 15 seconds.

There are situations when we start bathing a child in water at a temperature of +28 degrees. And at that time he fell ill. Is it possible to continue hardening? For a normal child, if you live normally with him, no hardening procedures are needed. If you swim at 28 degrees, this is normal, because the temperature at sea is +20. When a person gets sick, he behaves the same as any living creature. Imagine that a dog is sick, and the first thing he wants to do is go somewhere for a swim in cold water. Bathing a sick person is not natural from the point of view of nature. The degree of the disease is important. If a child has a moderate runny nose and an ailment in the butt, then give him a bath for good health. But if a child sweats, he feels bad and doesn’t want to swim. And you force him to swim because he needs to check a box, we didn’t harden him today. There must be logic everywhere. It’s worse when he screams, take off my clothes, I want to go outside, when the ice cream is being heated in the microwave - this is insanity.

In the end, I want to emphasize that in hardening, as in other areas of life, maintain a sense of proportion and adhere to common sense.

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How to strengthen a child with weak immunity (advice from Dr. Komarovsky). A child’s immunity is a powerful “screen” that should protect him from illness and help him recover in case of illness. Children with weak immunity are susceptible to a huge number of colds.

Weak immunity can result from:

absence breastfeeding;
poor nutrition;
taking immunomodulatory drugs.

How to properly strengthen your immune system

Modern medicine offers various drugs to prevent diseases, but most often drugs (the so-called "pherons") have the opposite effect, disrupting body functions.

You can strengthen your immune system with food and dietary adjustments ( add natural vitamins(fruits, vegetables), bee products, berries, nuts).

One of the simplest and effective ways Strengthening children's immunity is considered hardening. Moreover, hardening is not just dousing with cold water, but a whole complex of procedures.

Why harden children

Tempered Child:

suffers from colds less often;
tolerates severe illness and surgery more easily;
develops better;
more active, athletic, energetic.

Hardening strengthens the child’s immunity, but does not guarantee one hundred percent protection from diseases. Seasoned children also get sick, but much less often and more easily.

Hardening as a way of life

Parents of frequently ill children most often think about strengthening the immune system through hardening. The child’s weakened body cannot resist diseases, so infection occurs.

It is worth noting that hardening is not a single event, but a way of life, so not only the child, but also the parents will need to change their habits. Children’s lifestyle should be close to natural (walks in the fresh air, proper nutrition, active games).

What harms the immune system

Before we talk about hardening procedures, it is worth dwelling on common parental mistakes that interfere with the normal formation of immunity. The most common mistakes.

Dress inappropriately for the weather. Moreover, most often parents “bundle up” their children by wearing a T-shirt in winter, several warm sweaters, a jacket with a warm lining, a warm scarf that covers half of the face, and in summer – warm overalls and a jacket. All this interferes with normal thermoregulation, the child sweats and gets sick.
Binge eating. The child should eat as much as he wants; there is no need to run after him around the apartment with a spoon, persuading him to eat “for mom” or “for dad.”
No walks. Deprivation of a walk is one of the common ways to punish a child. Fresh air is the best way to strengthen your immune system. Children who go for walks in any weather tend to get sick less often.

Where to begin

It’s worth starting with the correct organization of the hardening itself:

The result does not depend on the time of year when hardening began, so you can start at any time;
Hardening procedures should be regular (repeated at the same time every day);
The child must be absolutely healthy; if the child is sick, you should wait, since hardening procedures can be harmful.

Swimming in cool water

This type of hardening is the most popular. It can be used in the first month of a child’s life. You need to start by gradually reducing the degree of water in which the baby is washed (to 36-34 degrees), after which the child is doused with water 1-2 degrees colder than what was previously in the bathroom. After the procedure, the baby should be wrapped in a warm towel and lightly rubbed.

The temperature depends on the age of the child and the season.

Children under one year old (in winter - 36-30 degrees, in summer - 35-28);
Up to 3 years (in winter – 34-28, in summer – 33-24);
Up to 5 years (in winter – 33-26, in summer – 32-22);
Up to 8 years (in winter – 32-24, in summer – 30-20).

Water temperature indicators are approximate; they can be adjusted depending on the individual characteristics of the child.

Air baths, walks, sunbathing

Air baths are especially useful for infants. They will strengthen the immune system and improve skin condition. If the weather permits, air baths can be arranged outdoors, in spring, autumn, winter period procedures can be carried out at home. The child needs to be completely undressed and left to lie naked for 5-7 minutes (air temperature 22 degrees).

The duration of air baths should be gradually increased to 15-20 minutes, reducing the temperature to 16-14 degrees.

Staying outside in sunny weather is beneficial for a child’s immunity (the head and shoulders should be protected with clothing). You can walk barefoot (prevention of flat feet).

Don't forget about daily walks with your child. This simple measure can strengthen your immune system.

Swimming

The peculiarity of swimming is the combination of stress on the body with the hardening effect of cool water. Babies under one year old need to swim for 1-2 minutes, 4-5 years old – up to 10 minutes.

You can swim in pools and open reservoirs (water temperature from 22 degrees).

Physical exercise

All children need physical activity. This doesn't have to be serious sports. For very active children, only morning exercises with a little warming up of the muscles and stretching will be enough, while calm kids additional vigorous activity will be needed.

Of course, children will not do the exercises on their own; parents will have to develop a set of exercises for daily activities with the child. To make exercise fun and quick, you can use children's music.

In a nutshell…

To strengthen a child’s weak immunity you need:

take a walk every day (in any weather);

do not force to eat;

encourage physical activity;

accustom the child to adhere to the regime (the regime of mental work and physical activity must be alternated);

take the child out of town or to the river whenever possible;

arrange daily infant air baths.

The rules are very simple, but their observance sometimes requires a radical restructuring of the regime of both the child and the parents. Hardening will be beneficial when it brings pleasure and does not become a daily chore.

Shame on the man

Just a quick run to the pharmacy!

Take at least a hundred pills

Still, zero health!

But Mother Nature

Full of other gifts.

Accept the forests, fields and waters,

And the mountain ranges, and the vaults of the sky -

And you are practically healthy!

Yu. S. Entin

The conditions are almost ideal - our own children's room, toys, well-fed, dressed, shod, the house is warm and no drafts, a wonderful kindergarten... He still gets sick. Negative parental emotions gradually accumulate. A mother is in conflict with her boss about receiving another sick leave to care for her child. Dad is tired of all this too; what has it come to - they already know him by sight in the pharmacy next door to the house! Need to do something!

So what to do? The answer seems obvious - harden. But as? Where to begin? What kind of thing is this, hardening?

Let's start with the definition of the term.

So, HARDENING - increasing the body's resistance to the adverse effects of a number of physical environmental factors (for example, low or high temperature, water, etc.) through systematic dosed exposure to these factors.

Our tasks completely different.

Firstly, explain the essence of hardening, its goals and ways to achieve them.

Secondly, to ensure that, when conducting experiments on children that bear the conventional but proud name of “hardening procedures,” adults are aware of their actions.

It is quite obvious that many external factors can cause diseases that are called “colds”. The most common causes of “colds” include, first of all, hypothermia, both general (dressed poorly, it’s cold in the apartment) and local (for example, got your feet wet or drank cold lemonade). On the one hand, the “cold-illness” relationship is completely obvious, on the other hand, it is completely incomprehensible.

Looking around, watching animals - dogs that run through the November puddles, crows that sit on wires in the bitter January frost - you involuntarily begin to feel a certain human inferiority, a certain isolation from nature. Is it really possible to pay for more developed brains with an absolute inability to live according to the laws of Nature? No, it is quite possible to explain the connection between a cold and extreme physical influences - falling into an ice hole, for example. But why does illness occur only because there was a breath of air from an open window, only because snow got into your shoes, only because you lost your hat at school and walked the five-minute walk home with your head uncovered? Why?

Answers to these questions should be sought in early childhood. After all, a newborn human baby has an innate ability to adapt to environmental conditions. The stability of these conditions - for example, constant and not at all low air temperature, warm water, sterile food, careful elimination of contact with moving air (wind) - leads to the fact that innate adaptation mechanisms are turned off as unnecessary. Unfortunately, it is the stability of external physical factors that is almost the main manifestation of parental love. What does this lead to? Moreover, physical factors that are not at all extreme for a person - moving air, called the terrible word “draft”, or the temperature in the room +17 ° C - become a source of increased danger.

But this is all theory. We have a fact: constant colds. Let's admit: we were wrong. Ready to improve.

Where to begin?

To begin with, understand: any person - no matter whether it is an adult or a child - is constantly influenced by a very specific set of external influences. These impacts can be conditionally divided into two groups. The first is natural factors: the famous sun, air and water, sung in songs and fairy tales. The second is civilization factors: place of residence, household chemicals, schooling, TV, clothing, transport, etc., etc.

Readers, of course, may well object: they say, not every child has his own room with a bunch of toys, and not every parent can afford an excess of food, and not all children spend hours doing their homework. That's how it is. But the whole paradox lies precisely in the fact that Losers from low-income families who are not overweight, as a rule, do not need hardening!

Let us now consider the main components of a natural lifestyle, which are highly desirable for adults and absolutely obligatory for children, especially in those everyday situations when the family council considers the issue of the time to toughen up the child.

Physical activity. Walk to school or maybe take the bus one stop? Watch a movie or play football? What is generally healthier – chess or tennis? On Sunday, the whole family does general cleaning, developing work skills, or on Sunday, the whole family goes into nature, and does general cleaning in two evenings on weekdays? Do we need to answer these questions? Do I need to explain that it is better to exercise physical activity in the open air, and not between the floor and the ceiling?
Cloth. Doesn't interfere with movement. The amount is moderate, since sweating causes colds more often than hypothermia.
Nutrition. Appetite - as the main criterion for the appropriateness of food intake in general and as an equivalent of energy consumption in particular. If he doesn’t want to eat, it means he hasn’t spent the proper amount of energy (on maintaining body temperature, on the physical activity we’ve already mentioned).

Wait a minute, the impatient reader will exclaim, our topic is “hardening”! What does hardening have to do with it?

Very much to do with it, because It is precisely hardening that people often try to make as a substitute for a natural way of life.

Classic situation: nice girl Lenochka is an excellent student. She reads a lot and loves cartoons, helps her mother wash the dishes, takes extra classes in English, and on Sundays a music teacher comes to the house (last year, grandfather bought a piano with the two-year pension he saved). Lenochka has a lot of toys and books, three diplomas, chronic tonsillitis, adenoids, low hemoglobin, allergies to oranges and chocolate. Over the winter, she suffered from acute respiratory infections five times and bronchitis once. Lenochka’s dad was the first to conclude that the child needed to be hardened, and was supported at the family council (five votes in favor, the mother-in-law abstained). There was even a mass-printed brochure “Hardening” in the house. They decided to start with dousing. There was a table in the book about what temperature to start with and how to reduce the temperature. Every day (before going to bed) Lenochka was doused with water - they started at 34 ° C, every week the water temperature was reduced by 1 ° C, they reached 30 ° C, but in the class everyone had the flu, and the book says: in case of illness, increase the temperature, again returned to 34 °C... In principle, hardening turned out to be very simple - spend about ten minutes a day on additional water procedures.

Let's return once again to the theoretical basis of hardening. Some physical factor, such as a draft, causes colds. If this factor is constant, first short-term (dosed), and then longer, then the body will get used to it (draft) and will not react painfully. From theory - a practical way of hardening: today we will sit for 20 seconds near an open window, tomorrow - a minute, the day after tomorrow - two minutes, ideally - in three months we will sleep with the window open. Wet feet are a disease. Let's pour some warm water into the bath and jump for two or three minutes before going to bed. The next day we’ll make the water a little colder and jump a little longer. Ideally, in six months we will be running through puddles in slippers.

It is precisely this theory and precisely these practical actions that hardening is introduced into our everyday life.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, “hardening procedures” do not bring any benefit or harm to the child, but have a huge benefit for the nervous system of the parents.

Hardening is a big fat cross on the conscience of mom and dad - they say, we did everything we could.

Once and for all, define certain rules that must be followed: walk in any weather and encourage physical activity in every possible way, never force you to eat, minimize contact with household chemicals, provide the opportunity to dress yourself (choose the number of things yourself). If the child does not recover from illness, decide on additional academic loads (music, foreign languages). Excessive knowledge and poor health do not make a person happy. Tidy up the children's room, throw out dust accumulators, wet cleaning every day. Do not dose fresh air, but dose TV, dose lessons, dose checkers, chess and tic-tac-toe. Give not toys and chocolates, give fresh air - not from a window, but in the forest, flowers - not in a vase, but in a field, water - in a river, and not from a water supply.

The direct connection between the child’s health and the parents’ ability to find time to strengthen this very health seems obvious. But we have what we have - a sad environment, a low level of material well-being, a constant search for a means of subsistence, and poor health among the parents themselves. It’s easy to say: “all your free time is for walking.” You must have free time. It's easy to say: "a cool shower in the morning." You must have hot water - without hot water it is difficult to make cool water, only cold water can be obtained. The hand does not rise to ventilate a room in which even without ventilation it is +15 ° C.

When carrying out any hardening measures, you should strictly observe three main principles:

1) systematicity - once you’ve started, don’t back down, don’t look for a reason to skip today;

2) gradualism — smooth increase in intensity and duration of impacts;

3) taking into account individual characteristics - age, psychological mood of the child himself, concomitant diseases, household factors.

Hardening procedures should bring pleasure to the child. It always makes sense to focus on those options of action that the child himself strives for. For example, he likes to walk barefoot. A very good option for hardening - parents just have to remember to be gradual and systematic.

Please note: hardening helps prevent only those diseases that are associated with the adverse effects of physical environmental factors. Hardening in no way can reduce the frequency of infectious diseases: if there is chickenpox in kindergarten or a flu epidemic begins, he will “safely” fall ill, like the rest, “not hardened.” But it is hardening that can greatly reduce the severity and duration of diseases, the frequency and likelihood of complications.

I emphasize again The main thing.

The child does not need hardening.

the child needs a natural, harmonious lifestyle.