Schools sun policy - am I wrong?

[Originalfoogirl]

Before I speak to the school about their sun policy, I wanted to know if others think I'm taking an unreasonable stance.

As soon as it starts getting sunny, we get a text from the school reminding us to send our children wearing sunscreen. Fair enough, a reminder is good. I also send our girl with a bottle of suncream and remind her to re apply it - as per the advice from cancer research and sunsmart. All day sunscreen is not effective. Yesterday she said she got in to trouble for asking for help to do it and was told "you're supposed to put it on before you come to school". At 7 she can kind of do it herself, but her disability does cause her some problems putting it on.

I know it can be a faff for a teacher to put sunscreen on 30 kids and there aren't enough assistants, but just as they have to help the littles get help changing for PE and for using the toilet etc, but to me, sunscreen is just as basic. I have friends who have had skin cancer.

I think the school should have a policy on this and build it in to their day. Schools in Australia seem to manage and before anyone says it, our sun is just as dangerous to children as theirs is.

I know many people just don't see the importance of it for their children and don't appreciate the risks of burning, but should I take this up with the school or not?

Lol I'm with sinking, although it's great that we are more aware of the dangers of over exposure to sun, we never had anything like sunscreen at school when I was a kid, lunch play time couldn't have been longer than 20 minutes, we all survived, I think the issues really kick in when teens insist on baking themselves for hours on end!

My ds has lots of health problems and is on meds which can 'cause' skin cancer and othrr cancers.

He is disabled (most hidden disabilities) and is only 5 and has to apply it by himself and a teacher/ ta has to watch.
Its school policy
and just tough shit.
He gets on with it and tbh your dc should to. I got the spray suncream which is easier to apply

Thank God schools are shut all summer!!!

Parents have no one else to blame then

It is very easy to safely supplement with vitamin D, and it is unlikely that DS gets enough vitamin D through sunshine anyway.

I don't know that it is that easy actually. I was told that if you are vitamin D deficient (I was) there isn't enough vitamin D in normal supplements to have an impact.

I try to get 10 or 15 minutes each day.

www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Summerhealth/Pages/vitamin-D-sunlight.aspx

"they can't possibly apply all that cream"

But teachers in other countries can and do. And don't seem to have more litigation either.

But do they? The Australian teacher further up thread said she has never put sun screen on a child.

suncream is bad for you?

what conspiracie theories areu reading

what a load of tosh

I don't understand dizzy, isn't that the children doing their own?

Yes children need to learn how to apply suncream to themselves. You find most children can do it from age 5 onwards, some younger like my 3 year old can do it himself. The teacher is watching as the children apply the cream and then tops up the one's that didn't/couldn't do it properly, like the special needs child, rather than having to suncream up 20, 6 year olds.

Hello - Aussie Mum living in the Netherlands... In Australia schools have giant pump bottles of sunscreen and it is applied before kids go out for lunch or morning tea. They eat in covered areas and kids may not leave these covered areas without a hat. EVERY DAY - regardless of the temperature or the weather. All fabulous in theory but now a lot of kids are getting vitamin d deficiency, too. The most vigilant parents have the kids with the softest bones. You can't win, can you? (BTW - I still show up to pick my kids up wearing polarised sunglasses, a hat and 50+ spf - all the tanned mothers at my kids' school think it's hilarious)

My eldest is a red head and burns easily, she is very pale and even her sister I feel needs a decent amount of sun protection throughout the summer. I use a fairly expensive all day sun tan lotion but I have no choice as the red head also seems to have a reaction to most other sun tan lotions apart from this one. I wish sun tan lotion was subsidised!

Actually GabsAlot it is not a conspiracy theory. You do not get that level of sun protection from natural ingredients. There are levels of chemicals that are necessary to make an artificial sun barrier obviously. Not to say they will kill you but they are not exactly good for you either. They do kill certain marine animals. Like they say, you take the rough with the smooth. There are certain brands that are less toxic but they are harder to find and more expensive. For people who use them a lot they are worth it, but for most Brits the annual use of suncream is short.

If you are a redhead you might have an advantage though on the vitamin d stakes news.health.com/2012/11/09/redheads-gene-cloudy-climates/

YABU.

I emailed two schools about joining up to this sun safety programme which another poster mentioned in a different thread. It looks great and with the rates of skin cancer higher than ever I had hoped they would be interested. They weren't.

The amount of people I saw today on the school run with bright red backs and shoulders was scary. Working with people, very young and old being disfigured by skin cancers or dying from melanoma has made me even more paranoid about burning and my children burning.

In an ideal world I would love it if schools could help younger ones reapply suncream but it isn't possible so I have to teach them and hope they reapply it properly themselves. If a child has SN and finds applying it extra difficult then I would hope they would supervise application at the very least.

I also think it is sad that teachers can't physically comfort children, although it's not true for some of my children's teachers who have hugged my children when they were upset, thank god.

My preschool is sunsafe accredited
It wasn't hard
We have shaded areas outside, limit the time children are out in hot weather and avoid going out between 11 and 2, we ensure all children bring in hats and suncream that we apply with parents permission.
Its a shame that we do all that and then children aren't adequately protected when they go to school because of " safeguarding" concerns

Never used to have sunscreen at school, went all day with only a drink at lunch time. Used to play out from sunrise to sunset with little adult supervision. How on earth did we survive??

How ignorant.

I look after quite a few people with childhoods like yours who didn't survive that long, and some who did but with half their face scarred, lip missing etc.

My mum was an awful sun worshipper. Think oil on her body to attract the sun and playing in the water for hours coming out looking like a berry kind of awful. She is 60 and hasn't had cancer yet but she is very high risk and she wishes they knew more about sun protection when she was younger because she has seen too many people her age die from skin cancer.

DH's granddad was the same. So far he has 'just' had BCC but the multiple appointments to burn bits of solar keratosis off isn't fun and before he got cancer he laughed at us for telling him to cover up, using the 'how did anyone survive?' kind of ignorance you just spouted.

It's difficult to know what the best policy is. Whilst sunburn is obviously very bad, 10-15 minutes of sun may be better for most people than no sun at all. Whilst you can take vitamin D supplements, the amount in the tablets you can buy in the shops is very low and possibly not enough to prevent diseases which have been associated with low levels of vitamin D. The prevalence of many disease e.g. MS increases the further away from the equator you live. Someone in DD's class has rickets..

For those that are interested in an all
Day lotion(Well my daughter has worn it for 6.5 hours a day for the last 2 summers and not burned and she is a very fair skinned blue eyed red head) then I use ultrasun. It also doesn't irritate her sensitive eczema prone skin. I do re-apply if she comes home from school and is back out again.

I also think it is sad that teachers can't physically comfort children

Why do people persist in perpetuating this lie? Of course school staff can comfort a child who is very upset or even distressed. Just that most of us wouldn't automatically hug a child who was crying, because there are other ways to comfort them that don't involve hugging. It doesn't make you unfeeling, just practical.

DD's year one teacher is a very warm woman who always has a cuddle for children who need it. Just before half term DD told me that she'd spent the day hugging her teacher, the TA and a student teacher a very dashing young man who I wouldn't mind hugging myself.

10-15 minutes on your forearms in the morning is the amount of sunshine you need to avoid getting rickets. How much do you need to minimise your risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer and heart disease? Nobody really knows.

But if it was really healthiest for me to stay in the shade at all times and use a parasol when I had to venture in the sun then why did evolution go to the trouble of making me this milky beige colour? When my ancestors made the long trek north they had their own natural sunscreen. But the paler skinned mutants came to dominate the local gene pool - not slightly out-numbering the others but completely monopolising it. That has to be the result of a huge fitness advantage.

However there's good evidence that actual burning is a risk factor for malignant melanoma, which is every bit as scary as it sounds, so yes it's well worth doing some very cautious sums to avoid burning. I'm just not subscribing to the "tanning = damage = to be avoided at all costs" philosophy. And of course Northern Europeans in Australia need all the lead lined parasols they can get, because no, the sun is not equally dangerous at latitudes of 33 and 50 degrees.

The suncream only has to last from 8am-1pm.

I have very pale children but honestly, an application of suncream in the morning, hat, water bottle and long sleeves and they have never got burnt at school.

I may be wrong but surely if you expose yourself to some sunshine each day you will build up a bit of resistance to being burnt by the sun. If you slather yourself in sunscreen everyday and then forget one day then you will burn and increase your risk of skin cancer. Just putting it out there...

The most vigilant parents have the kids with the softest bones. You can't win, can you?

Not in Australia.There, you'll have to use vitamin D supplements.
But in the Netherlands - just let your children walk in the sun for ten to twenty minutes. The sun there won't harm them in that time unless perhaps they're albinos.

Australia is high danger territory with regard to sunburn, because of the hole in the ozone layer. The state of things in Australia is not natural even for Australia. I've read animals get sunburn there - native animals.

If they have a 15 minute break like my DC does then how is a teacher + TA supposed to get sun cream on 15 children each and still leave the children with enough time to make it worth while going outside? At lunch, are the staff supposed to give up some of their lunch break to put on sun cream or finish teaching earlier?

YABU.