An Introduction to Measles By: www.fridayschildmontessori.com

“The cat’s got the measles, the measles, the measles. The cat’s got the measles –

cross your legs, you’re out.”

This rhyme was interesting not just because it was a new one for me and it

was neither a skipping rhyme nor a handclap game or even a rhyme for initiating the start of a handstand

contest (all action games I played at school),

but because it contained a reference to a childhood illness that an awful lot of children these days only encounter

measles in old-fashioned stories.

Incidentally, just in case you didn’t know this rhyme either and you want to give your children a new action game to

play, my daughter’s game went like this: you stand in a group in a rough

circle and chant the rhyme.

As you chant, you jump so your legs are apart as you land the first time then so

you’ve got your ankles crossed the second time, then so you land with legs

uncrossed, etc.

If you finish the rhyme with your legs crossed, you’re out. Continue until

there’s only one person left in.

Anyway, back to the measles.

The measles we’re talking about here are English Measles.

German Measles are also known as Rubella and they’re another story.

The majority of parents who send their children to early childhood centres,

including our Friday’s Child Montessori, have had their children vaccinated as babies against measles.

Here in Australia, the vaccines against the measles are given at the ages of 12

months and 18 months (yes, you need two shots of the vaccine to be fully

immunised).

For those who have come over the Tasman from New Zealand, the

vaccination programme in that country is to give the measles vaccine at 15

months and 4 years.

This means that if you’re one of the many parents who has immigrated to

Australia from New Zealand when their children are at preschool age, your child might not be fully vaccinated.

This would be the case if your child got the 12-month shot in New Zealand and you then moved over here to the Gold Coast when your child was three years old – too young for the second vaccine

in New Zealand but too old for the second one over here.

If this is your situation, whether or not you go to our Montessori preschool yet or whether you’re just reading this article out of general interest, then see

your GP and get this situation dealt with.

At one stage, some well-meaning but probably misinformed people

believed and promoted the idea that the measles vaccine caused autism.

Or, to put it in more scientific terms, that the measles vaccination increased

children’s risk of autism.

However, this proved to be scaremongering, to a large extent. A lot of parents opted not to vaccinate their

children against measles because of this perception of risk.

You can guess what happened. The autism rate didn’t go down

noticeably, but measles outbreaks are happening thanks to those children

who haven’t been vaccinated.

Australia has quite a good track record when it comes to measles, and this disease has practically been wiped

out over here thanks to the intense vaccination programme.