My Little Germaphobe

Do you remember the movie What About Bob? How does someone become so afraid of germs that they can not leave their home?


With the new baby at our house and all of the fun illnesses going around right now. I invested in multiple bottles of hand sanitizer and put them around the house so they would be convenient to use. I even put a bottle in my car which has been very useful.
Josh is very familiar with hand sanitizer because, the first thing they do when he goes to nursery every Sunday is squirt some on his hands. When he discovered the bottles at our house he began bathing in the stuff. He not only put it on his hands but all over his body to "kill the germs"
At first my mom and I moved all of the bottles out of his reach so eventually we had five bottles sitting in the same spot where only the adults could get them. Then after thinking about it I moved all of the bottles back to their original positions in places where I thought they would be used the most. I decided that too clean would be better than not clean.

Then I got a bottle and showed Josh that we only need to use it on our hands and one or two squirts is enough to kill all of the germs.

Now Josh is using it the right way, but he is washing his hands a lot!!!!!! Which in this day and age is probably a good thing. My only fear is that I am creating a Germaphobe.


Now he is always asking me if he needs to wash his hands. Sometimes he says he needs to wash his hands, then he puts hands sanitizer on them, rubs it in and then looks at his hands and says..."Oh I can still see germs. I need to wash my hands again. Mom should I wash my hands again? Do you see the germs?" When he gets like this he usually washes them four or five times before the germs are all gone.

Should I be worried, or just happy he has clean hands?