Be careful when showing fondness over babies

It’s difficult to restrain from playing with cute babies or complimenting their parents on their adorable features, but doing so in the Philippines is believed by some, to be a potential cause of illness. Referred to as either “usog” or “bati”, this superstition says that when a person with strong energy greets a child, the child may soon after suffer from unexplainable discomfort. This is why, especially in the countryside, older people know to say “pwera usog” when showing fondness over children. This is meant to counter any usog that may have happened otherwise. If this isn’t said, and parents attribute certain maladies of their children to usog, they may ask the greeter to smear their saliva on the suffering child’s forehead as a cure.