Stay-At-Home Dad: It’s snot funny

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Updated: February 16, 2012 8:07AM

I usually catch my 4-year-old son picking his nose in the car. I’ll spy Pete daydreaming in his car seat with his index finger lodged deep in his nostril.

“Pete! Stop picking your nose,” I shout, trying to stare him down through the rearview mirror.

He typically laughs, pulls out something gross and shows me.

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” I reply upon examining his find.

This only makes him laugh harder. Then, he wipes a freshly picked booger on his pants, hides it somewhere in the car or consumes the evidence.

I immediately want to hurl.

“Eweeh, Peter. Gross!” I reply, only to elicit more laughter.

Clearly, trying to shame a preschooler into using Kleenex isn’t working. Occasionally, I tell Peter that he could give himself a bloody nose by picking his boogers. This gives him pause but surely hasn’t stopped him.

I also want to tell him that he could make himself sick by picking his nose, particularly if he continues to taste test the findings. But I wasn’t sure if this was true, so last week I made some calls.

As it turns out, you can’t make yourself sick by picking your nose. So says Dr. Ayesha Khalid, a specialist in adult and pediatric otolaryngology (ear, nose & throat). The self-described “professional booger picker” teaches her craft at Harvard Medical School.

She said picking your nose does spread germs. Thus, kids can get others sick by spreading their snots around. As a result, day care providers and schools often have strict anti-nose-picking policies.

Chronic pickers can actually pick a hole in their nose, though this is rare. Such patients can literally make their nose whistle by forcing air through the hole.

“You’d have to pick your nose everyday, non-stop,” Khalid said.

Bloody noses can be a problem and are often a result of aggressive picking. For pediatric patients, bloody noses are among the top five reasons for an office visit, Khalid said. In some cases, the nose needs to be cauterized.

However, pinching the nose for a solid five minutes stops most bloody noses. The prolonged pinch closes the wound, and it can be further sealed with a shot of Afrin in each nostril, Khalid said.

The only time she’s concerned about nose picking is when it’s concentrated on one side. In children, this can be a sign that they have something lodged up their nose.

Khalid once pulled a nickel out of a boy’s nose. He shoved it up there on a dare but needed her help to remove it.

As for consuming boogers, there’s little doubt about the gross factor.

However, kids can’t make themselves sick because the nose and its contents are actually cleaner than the mouth. Plus, you can’t spread germs to yourself, Khalid said.

As for why kids put their snots in their mouth, that remains a mystery. I can’t imagine it tastes good. In fact, it amazes me that I can’t get my boys to try a taste of roast beef, but they’ll snack on a booger. Khalid has a theory.

“I think it is a good disposal system and convenient,” she said.

Khalid said almost everyone picks his or her nose. It simply appears that children do it more often because they have no shame. For social reasons, kids start to become more discrete about picking around age 6 or 7, Khalid said.

So I have a couple more years to live in booger town before my boys clean up their act … or at least do their picking when nobody is watching.

Howard A. Ludwig is a former business writer who traded his reporter’s notebook for a diaper bag, becoming a stay-at-home dad.

He can be reached at howardaludwig@yahoo.com.