Exposure to the bacteria in soil can be good for mental health
The real takeaway for me as a parent here is that the more and more we prevent our kids from being actual kids, the more subtleties we might be depriving them of.<p>Dating myself a little, but growing up as a kid in Virginia, &#x27;outside&#x27; play was a mainstay.  We went out into the woods, we built tree forts, we dug holes, we made tire swings.  Nowadays, the parents of my children&#x27;s friends are completely unwilling to let their kids engage in such behavior, whether because it&#x27;s potentially dangerous (it is), or dirty (that too), the kids are expected to meet up in a sanitized location, play in a playroom, or possibly on a playground with rubber mulch as the surface material, and seldom are kids allowed or expected to just go play.<p>Meanwhile, we&#x27;ve got more and more kids being prescribed more and more things, and while I honestly haven&#x27;t the slightest clue whether to attribute it to the lack of outdoor play or the miracles of modern medicine, it seems possibly correlated.