To think that letting a child get bad sunburn is child abuse?

[laura032004]

Because if you let them burn themselves with say boiling water, eyebrows would be raised. I hate to see kids on the beach (abroad) with bright red shoulders and faces. It's easy enough to get sunsuits and suncream these days, so why don't people use them properly?

I remember so well getting horribly sunburned as a child. I recall my brother tearing huge strips of skin off my back and also having huge blisters on my shoulders. Did my parents bother with suncream - did they heck. I'm very pale skinned with red hair so in terms of skin cancer, I'm petrified tbh.

I'm so vigilant about sun cream for myself and DH and now that we have DD, I have just gone out and bought factor 40 once a day spray that I will be coating her in come the summer.

if you could find me a link for larger kids (9yr+) sun suits would be very grateful.

unfortuntaly she cant even wear these for long as they irritate her eczema skin. i do tend to make sure she wears cotton t-shirts with sleeves and longer shorts.

i have smothered dd3 in suncream including her hair, will add that pic to profile as its quite funny. but she will also keep hates on now, so wont have to do that this year.

I remember putting blue sunscreen into dd2's very fine hair!

No, negligence not abuse. And lack of education on the part of the parents. A distinct difference I think.

FWIW I was raised by a woman who thought that getting burnt was great as getting burnt: get a tan (eventually). Which was an OK philosophy for her, she is dark haired and eyed with dark olive skin, she probably wouldn't get burnt if she was left near a nuclear fallout.

I, however, am very pale with green eyes/blonde hair. So I used to get frazzled every year as she thought sunscreen was completely pointless. The highlight being 4 weeks in Kenya when she covered me with parraffin 'to stop most of the burning' . God, you should have seen the blisters.

Due to this I am pretty non-negotiable about sunscreen with my dd.

I always apply sun cream on the dc who have dark complexion as we are Italians.
Mind you, seeing English children very little dressed in the wind and the rain can make someone from a Mediterranean country go all , while it is shocking for you seeing mediterranean children run on the beach without a hat or a sun suit.

ds2 got some sunburn on his face last week, in the UK, being carried in the sling. I was still in 'winter mode' and just didn't think about the sun getting stronger. Usually I'm really careful.

I remember seeing a little one, sitting in a pram, about eight months or so, crying and in obvious pain and burnt raw on his face, whilst his mother/carer walked round the local market.

It still haunts me 22 years later.

It's not the sort of thing you forget is it Manx. It's very upsetting to see, and makes me very angry.

Misdee - here you are They have some in the sale bit too, so take a look in there. HTH

Had to name change for this one.......My DD got a bit burnt on holiday last year. My 7 month old DS was sitting in a home made bumbo I'd dug in the sand, DD was playing with her friend and I was getting pissed with my friend. The reason I was getting pissed, is because my friend was revealing to me the fact she knew I had slept with her husband many years earlier before they were together and we (co-incidently) became friends. So hows that for neglect?????

I am not saying that I don't use sunscreen, I was just saying that there are 2 schools of thought. Veronika Robinson who produces the Mother magazine is vey dogmatic on the subject-she believes the sun creams, sprays whatever cause skin cancer and would on no account use them-I will find the link later-no time now. I think that it is important and have always used them.

that's very interesting -I've never heard that school of thought - I would like to see the link!

The sunscreens are carcinogenic - my partner sells loads of brands of very good quality sunscreen in his shops and it is a real issue with the labs that produce them right now. They are all desperately trying to come up with non-carcinogenic sunscreen before the word gets round that the current sunscreens are carcinogenic.

Best thing for small children is to cover up with clothing - and not go outside between 12 and 4.

speaking as a Mum whose 6 year old has a sunburnt face even though he had sun cream on yesterday, I find that a bit offensive, TBH.

Careless, unaware, ignorant maybe - hardly abuse

I say yes in certain extreme cirumstances, and have good reason to do so.

A few years ago dd was in hospital for a few days. The day before a little girl came in, she was about 4/5. Her mum & dad had split up and it was her turn to stay at her dads, he had a party with all his friends and lots of alcohol. He left the little girl to run around with only a pair of shorts on (middle of a heatwave).

When he took her home he told her to put a jumper on and told her that she would be ok. By the time she got home, she was screaming in agony, she had developed blisters and they had stuck to her jumper. She had to be heavily sedated to get the jumper off completely and was bandaged from the neck down to just above her bum and she had a morphine drip constantly at her side. He little face was also quite badly sunburnt.

I'll NEVER forget her screams when they were changing her bandages.

SSSandy2 - "I keep my dd out of the sun between 11am and 3pm which you can manage quite well on holiday for 2 weeks but if you live in that climate, how easy would it be to avoid the sun at all times and always have your dc's skin protected."

Interestingly, when we are abroad with my mum and dad (we quite often visit my parents for extended periods) the DS's are much less likely to be in the sun at the worst part of the day. We've no particular need to 'make the most' of the weather, as it's always there. As such, we'll go out early (7am-10am), or later afternoon and stay until early evening. I think it's more tempting to be out in the sun at midday whilst you're on holiday.

Radley - that is terrible.

My worst ever experience was seeing two twin babies in a pub garden at about 7pm. It had been a boiling hot day, and these two girls were quite obviously sunburnt (not just hot or a bit red), and crying in pain with it. The parents were merrily drinking away.

Tommy - you put suncream on, so you tried. You took precautions. OK, they failed, and perhaps next time you'll use a different hat / stronger factor lotion / bring him in the shade earlier..., but you tried. I'm talking about people who don't try to stop it, or who realise their children are getting burnt, and don't remove themselves from the sun at that point.

I remember similar thing Radley, I broke my arm as a teen and in A&E cubicle next to me was a 6-7 yr old with blisters that looked like filled bags of jelly hanging from her skin. Her screams made me cry and I didn't even have children then.

But Anna not all clothing will protect you from the sun, thin light weave will allow sun through.

Ambre Solaire do a spray in factor 60+ for whoever was asking.

Other prob I find with suntan lotion is so many aren't the fact they say they are (which is why I use the ambre solaire one as it comes out high in all the tests I've seen). Also shops will put last year;s leftover stock out, but the effectiveness goes down the older it gets.

I am verystringent with ds - but that is because both me and dp burn easily (factor 60+ is for dp - he can burn in 30mins with factor 30 on, me and ds can get away with 30-40 as long as applied regularly).

Often though it's difficult to realise the danger of being burned when the wind is up and it feels cold.

Luckily ds has never burnt yet, but it only takes one small error of judgement. Especially amongst those with very pale skin (i.e. our family)

marmaduke - well, obviously you use your intelligence to judge whether the clothing is thick enough to protect skin.

In any case, if you don't go out between 12 and 4 (sun time) and you cover up at other times and you are in England, you don't risk much.

Yes Anna, I use my intelligence. Not everyone does.

I think if you make a habit of it then perhaps you could say neglect. A one off is bad judgement. As a parent of a lily white dd I have suffered this guilt .

I've had the experience of going to a hot country, slathering suncream on the kids and them still getting burned in the first couple of hours...I'd say I was guilty of ignorance or poor judgement in that instance, rather than abuse or neglect.

If it happened repeatedly, that would be a different story.

I think that you have to use sunscreen, especially if like me and my DCs you are fair skinned. However the OP was asking if it was child abuse not to and I said that there were 2 points of view, I don't want to put words in the mouth of the writer of this blog but from my understanding she would be saying that using sun screens was child abuse.
I haven't tried doing a link before so I hope it works. You have to scroll down to the second part of Saturday June 10th 2006 to get the bit about sunscreen.
veronikarobinson.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

A second one is at veronikarobinson.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html scroll down to May 13th 2006.

I just thought I would throw an alternative view in the discussion.