Here’s how often are your kids are getting your family sick

Plus: How to make time slow down [View this email online]( [NPR Health]( Month Day, 2022 by Andrea Muraskin This week: Grab the vitamin C: s[cience shows more kids at home = more viruses](. Plus, how to ‘[slow down time’ and make more memories](. And, we may be giving the “love hormone” [more credit than it deserves](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Your kids are adorable germ vectors. Here's how often they get your household sick]( Credit: Joy Ho for NPR This winter, it feels like everybody’s doing it: getting sick, that is. Especially children, their parents, and other adults who spend time with kids. If you’re raising kids it may (or may not) come as a comfort to know that little ones frequently catching viruses and passing them on to their elders is normal. Want evidence? A study from the University of Utah followed 26 families for a year, collecting nasal samples from everyone in the home, every week. Compared to households with no children, families with just one kid had a virus detection five times more often. The study took place from 2009 to 2010, during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. This year, a combination of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 is hitting households especially hard. Nationwide, "pediatric care right now is at this point of strain," pediatrician Rachel Pearson, says, not just because of the current surge but because of an underinvestment that predates the pandemic. Find out [how your own domestic germ factory measures up against other households](. And remember, this too shall pass. [Also: 'Dirt Is Good': Why kids need exposure to germs]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- [To reignite the joy of childhood, learn to live on 'toddler time']( Islenia Milien for NPR Fourteen years ago, I visited a boyfriend in Israel. One afternoon, he took me biking at a nature preserve in the Galilee. Hundreds of herons were making a racket. A big fish leaped out of the water, and the sunset lit up the green hills to the east, crowned by a snowy mountain peak. My memories of that experience are so vivid, that it feels as if time had slowed down. NPR’s Rhitu Chatterjee describes a similar feeling when she talks about early moments with her son. “When he flashed his first voluntary smile at my husband and me,” she writes “it felt as if the seconds expanded into minutes.” She became a mom in her 40s, she writes, so “time already felt precious.” But now that her kid is 3, she finds herself wondering: how did the years go by so fast? What happened to my cuddly baby? Neuroscientist Peter Tse says humans experience time in more than one way. "We have a perception of time in the moment,” he says. “And then you have how you regard time by looking through your memories." When we’re really, really, paying attention to what’s going on around us, Tse says, we’re processing more information second by second and minute by minute, then we are in everyday life. That makes time feel subjectively longer. When you're cuddling with a newborn, or when you’re biking through breathtaking scenery, you can get into that state of attention automatically. Of course life, and parenting, is mostly not those moments. For most of us, it’s more repetitive routine than time-expanding wonderment. And all that monotony can actually squish our sense of time, Tse says. [But with some planning and intention, you can break away and make memories more often](. [ICYMI: The 5 minute playtime ritual that can get your kids to listen better]( [There’s more to bonding than the 'love hormone,' study shows]( [Prairie voles mate for life and are frequently used to study human behavior.]( Todd H. Ahern/Emory University Speaking of baby cuddles, you’ve probably heard about oxytocin, a hormone that’s released during labor, breastfeeding, physical affection, and sex. Books have been written about the chemical, offering advice on how understanding oxytocin can help you become a better parent or find love. One even credits the hormone for [human morality and empathy writ large](. To learn about how oxytocin may work in humans, researchers often study prairie voles, cute little rodents that mate for life. They’re known for cuddling and grooming their monogamous partners. Past studies have shown that when adult prairie voles are given drugs to block oxytocin, they lose interest in pair-bonding behavior. In a recent study, researchers used gene editing to remove oxytocin receptors from vole embryos. They expected the resulting pups would grow up to be cold, loveless voles like the ones given drugs to block oxytocin. But their actual findings shocked them, [and may have implications for understanding autism and human social behavior](. [Also: Is your dog looking at you like that because she wants a treat, or because she loves you? This oxytocin study offers a clue.]( Before you go: [Gel nail polish is popular for its durability, but needs to dry under a UV light. A new study raises questions about the potential health risks of those devices.]( StockPlanets/Getty Images - When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? The question is [more relevant than ever]( - Many Americans don’t know basic abortion facts. [Test your knowledge]( - FDA considers a major shift in [COVID vaccine strategy]( - UV nail dryers may pose cancer risks. [Consider these precautions]( We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of [NPR's health journalism]( on Shots and follow us on Twitter at [@NPRHealth](. 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