Well, so it would seem here in Italy. I have been having arguments with my Italian other half about the sweatiness of our little one. He, like me, is prone to sweating. And being an energetic 4 year old (12 in 2015), he runs around and sweats even more. This is extremely dangerous in Italy as, apparently, it can provoke colds, catarrh, or worse.
What I don’t really understand is, if sweating is really so dangerous, why does she insist on dressing our little fellow in long and heavy trousers? Surely this will cause him to sweat even more and the heavy clothes will retain the sweat and thus lead to the dreaded sweat-related health problems. Not logical, as Mr Spock might be heard to utter.
Don’t even start me on about creating through-drafts in the house in summer to cool us all down – this is much more dangerous than sweating and is potentially fatal in Italy, as far as I can make out. Combining the two is asking for real trouble! Place a sweaty child in an air current, and hospitalization, or worse, will be around the corner!
Clash of Cultures
These are cultural things and it is not only my other half who worries about the ill effects of sweating and cooling breezes – all Italians do. Even our child’s doctor asks if our little one has been sweating when he turns up with the sniffles in winter or summer.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
English people, well all the ones I have ever known, just do not get all hot and bothered about getting all hot and sweaty and opening windows to let a cooling breeze blow around the house in the height of summer. Italians, on the other hand, will close windows, especially in the sultry evenings, to stop any breeze entering their houses! Moving air really does terrify Italians.
I have Sweated and Lived!
On the sweat front, I have been hot and sweaty on plenty of occasions – such as when I regularly cycled for around 60 miles or so, but I don’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects, not as far as I am aware. On the other hand, I think my other half would just about tie our little one down in order to prevent him from doing anything which might provoke sweating. Indeed, I am told not to play with my son during the summer months, because I may cause him to sweat. This causes my Anglo-Saxon eyes to roll, but I now bite my tongue to avoid the inevitable heated discussions. I invariably lose the arguments because I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, I ain’t a doctor but have lived though many sweat episodes to tell the tale.
I’m inclined to believe that couples from different cultures all have similar problems with silly little cultural differences, and that these differences do not make intercultural relationships particularly easy at times.
Molehills can, indeed, become mountains in terms of mixed-culture relationships. The sweating issue really does lead to heated exceptionally arguments.
