to think it's outrageous to not put suncream on your child in this weather

[BornSicky]

a little girl aged 3/4 was playing out front this afternoon wearing barely any clothes, no parent in sight and was bright red everywhere. SHe was out there for a good while. her poor little face was glowing with the heat.

i'm sooo angry. had it been remotely appropriate, i'd have slathered my suncream all over her.

AIBU to think it's really not that fucking hard to cover your child in suncream before they go outside, especially when it's this hot?

I don't put sunscreen on my children. They go as brown as a nut within about two days of this weather.

Judge away.

overthehillmum yeah that's really neglectful actually, and I'd have done the same. It's one thing with yr own kids but not with someone else's
shagmundfreud my little boy is half pakistani and I swear he goes gold in this weather. Sooo gorgeous

Thanks funny. You too :)

I don't use sunscreen, it blocks vitamin d from the sun, it prevents you from seeing when you have enough so instead of the skin going pink as a warning sign you get nothing except invisible sun damage and a false sense of security, it prevents you from building proper resistance to the sun. The only benefit from sunscreen is to the corporations who make billions selling their damaging cream to people.

I say that as a very pale person (almost albino) who has never burnt, have the kids play outside all year round, build up sun exposure slowly, cover up/shade when exposed for whatever your limit is, without sunscreen you know when you have had enough.

When I worked in a day nursery the children could not set foot out the door without sunscreen on. I think it was very OTT. Most of us are very lacking in vitamin D in this country. I think personally it better to be in the shade when you are likely to burn but I do not put it on routinely now as you are blocking out all the beneficial effects of being in the sun.

I keep hearing people saying "oh the sun doesn't affect them" and so they dont put any on. Is it not that there are different types of uv rays and some cause burning and some cause the damaage that causes skin cancer? Or am I making that up?

You can safely supplement to provide a good level of Vitamin B (any OTC multivitamins from a major supplier will do this).

There is however no such thing as safe sunburn.

Hope no one saw my son yesterday, he was red as a tomato, was the heat though, building a fort is busy work apparently. :o YABU as from experience you can't really see if you're sunburnt till the evening, any redness during the day will probably be heat.

I'm with Shagmundfreud, due to some more exotic blood in him DS is olive skinned and goes a lovely brown if he looks out of the window. I'm a big ginger and have sunburn from the 10 minute walk to and from the school. Always bring him for mid day though, nice sandwich and out of the sun for two hours.

Dammit, I thought I'd missed a bit of DS2's cheek with the factor 50 because it was all red, but this morning both cheeks have come up and he's got a temperature.....

Fifth disease I think. Rats. It's going round the nursery

even putting suncream on does not then mean you can put kids in sun for hours on end! Do more damage to skin by going mad as soon as a bit of sun appears, UK white kids skin just not used to it
Get a bloody hat on them.

If you are worried about vitamin D why not use a supplement? Surely that's safer than risking sun damage.

I am a teensy weensy bit concerned by the list of chemicals in the contents.... No skin damage now traded for what unknown damage in the future?

I haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to say that I put factor 30 on this morning and then went for a walk into town. I was out about 40 minutes and had put factor 30 on everywhere that was exposed. I came back bright red from the heat, not from sunburn. Splashed myself with cold water when I got back and slowly went back to my normal colour.

Ruby, you can use a natural suncream like Badger sunscreen. It's a mineral suncream Zinc oxide) - so it blocks UVA and UVB rather than using chemical absorbers. We've been using it for years and it works great.

Ingredients:

Active Sunscreen Ingredient: Non-Nano, Uncoated Zinc Oxide 18.75%
Inactive Sunscreen Ingredients: Olea Europaea (Extra Virgin Olive) Oil, Cera Alba (Beeswax), Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Oil, Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Butter, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Essential Oil of Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender), Tocopherol (Natural Vitamin E), and CO2 Extract of *Hippophae Rhamnoides (Seabuckthorn).

Website here

It's a US site but you can also get in from websites in the UK :)

tanned skin is actually damaged skin... just sayin

Just got 9 year old DS to put some on for the first time this week. Oops!
No sunburn though so far.

If a parent can allow a 3 yr old to wander around alone it is easy to assume they may not have put suncream on that child.

My dd is 3 and I use factor 50 on her, but only when I know she will be out in the garden or at the park most of the day. She goes bright red, due to heat rather than burning though. And always has a hat on, and I make sure I have plenty of water/juice in my bag to stop her from getting dehydrated. If she is just in the garden for a short while then I don't always put sun cream on her, and she hasn't got burnt.

SPFs of over 30 contain a lot of chemicals, which may be as bad for you as exposure to the sun.

The sun also damages your skin all year round, not just when it's hot.

not a massive fan of suncream purely as i am very allergic, so my kids wear baggy cotton clothes, long sleeves, long shorts and sun hats and we are careful about sun exposure, if i have to ie at the beach etc they get suncream but most of the time i make sure they are wearing appropriate clothes and make sure they drink plenty, are in the shade some of the time etc. they also dont seem to burn, never have done, i would guess this is because i am careful with them so wouldnt let them out in a skimpy vest/not top in really hot sun but also taht they naturally are more olive skinned in the summer, like me actually, despite being blue eyed and blonde. my sister on the other hand and her son are pale pale, and go beetroot red at the hint of warm weather.

altinkums post is good :)