My Kid Loves to Eat His Boogers
Revoltingly gross or evolutionarily advantageous?
It happens. Maybe you’re at the park with your young child or, worse, at a restaurant chewing on your fried calamari as you notice your little one with a clinger on his finger. Next thing you know, it’s in his mouth. He takes one brief obligatory chew and swallows. Your calamari starts to creep its way back up your throat.
Most kids seem to love eating snot at some stage in their development. Though the thought of mucophagy gives me dry heaves, my son seemed to have a real passion for it when he was just a toddler (OK, maybe it surpassed the toddler years…). I can distinctly remember the day his preschool teacher told me that my son had placed a giant- some parts gooey, some parts dry- booger in his mouth and swallowed. She was equally horrified and amused when he told her proudly that “it tastes like banana!”
So, I began to wonder, “What’s all this booger eating really about?”
My son certainly did not learn this behavior from home. Maybe from other kids? Plausible, but the habit began before he was even in preschool. “No, this has to be innate behavior, I told myself. Don’t our genes mold our nature? Something in his DNA must be telling him to do this. An instinct, even. But why? Evolutionary advantage?”
