Eczema and stress at school

[robertbrucerussell]

I found an old thread (circa 2012) on this topic when searching for what we think is happening to our seven-year-old daughter.

She has raging eczema that always seems to go away on any kind of school break. We had previously thought it was the weather change (i.e. went from UK to Austria or India or wherever), but having seen the same effect on breaks when we stayed in town, we started to question whether it was the stress at school, which we started to also glean from what she tells us about school.

The teacher is a bit cagey about it (says she seems happy), but the staff at school do say she scratches more or less constantly.

Anybody relate to this? Would greatly appreciate any hints. Her skin is pretty bad and I'm starting to think that the psychological factor is probably a big factor.

[Pambilaga1608]

My 12 year old is going through a particularly bad episode of eczema at the moment. We are I Spain and she is currently sitting 3-4 tests per day at the moment. I have tried everything and at the moment I'm keeping milk off her, putting creams on her and giving her antihistamine . It's so distressing and school can be a very testing time if your child is the sensitive type. She's happy at school but there are often issues with friend groups etc.
The school breaks for summer at the end of Jume and hoping to see a huge improvement. I'll let you lnow if there are the expected improvements.

[BabyGanoush]

School uniform is often synthetic and scratchy

Finding cotton shirt and trousers for my DS helped a lot.

[Wolfiefan]

Do you bathe DD more often in term time?
YY to synthetic fabrics!
Do you use emollient less when she's at school?
If she scratches at home what do you do? Could it be she has got in the habit of scratching at school.
Air con or overheated rooms make my eczema sooooo much worse too.

[Watermelon2017]

It might be worth keeping a food diary to rule out or discover a food allergy? Skin conditions can be affected by the food that you eat.

[robertbrucerussell]

Thanks for the support & suggestions.

Mercifully no school uniform but we haven't really gone down the food allergy thing. She hardly takes any milk at all, and at least the GPs have said that this is unlikely to be down to an individual allergy (principally because it doesn't seem to fluctuate in the short term).

[user7755]

Robert - from bitter experience. Go back to your GP with the Eczema NICE guidance. Point out that the eczema is interfering with her school life, her leisure activities and her sleep, insist on a dermatology referral and ask for allergy tests.

It took 7 years of repeated requests for more treatment from our GP, 7 years of being told it's not allergies, you are not putting enough cream on, whilst our DS had open, weeping eczema, scraped his back up and down walls floors whatever he could. I did what I have advised you to do and got a referral to hospital, within an hour he had been given a blood tests which proved he was highly allergic, 3 weeks later the tests showed that among other things he was massively allergic to household dust mites.

He was much worse at school because they spent a lot of time messing about on the carpet which was hoovered with a bog standard hoover as opposed to an allergy one. It didn't fluctuate because the allergens are environmental and always there (or were at the time). Stress does make it worse but understanding the triggers and getting proper treatment made a huge difference.

Good Luck.