school bans sun cream!

[luciemule]

The week before last, I posted about DD being made to sit in strong sun with no hat and because of that had bad sunstroke.
Then I commented on how they tell parents to apply sun cream before coming to school and not bringing it with you and reapplying it. I think this is probably classed as neglect if then, a child burns due to not having sun cream on. This week, the kids are out all day doing sports week and have various activities planned either in the playground with very little shade or on the school field with not much either.
It's ironic as the school sent home an Ambre Solaire sun fact sheet last friday telling of sun burn dangers!!1

see here

actually it's more like 15 mins and you can get that from exposing your hands alone.
I think there aren't 2 clear sides to this debate.

Ronshar by afternoon break (2:30ish), I'm sure most suncream would have been rubbed off by then.

Have you heard of Rickets? Look it up. I cant do links nor do I have the time to start (trying) linking to scientific medical papers I have read over the last two years.
If you have knowledge to the contrary then great but I would rather you didnt say I was taking rubbish!

I agree that most cream will have rubbed of but the protection is there for the majority of the day.

Perhaps ask the school to give your children the chance to put on a long sleeve tshirt for play time. This is far more effective than cream.

Ultrasun is a good all day sunscreen and easy to apply. The sensitive skin formulation is the better (and nicer) option for kids. They do and SPF20 (their lowest), 28 and a stronger ones till (can't remember the SPF).

I get it in John Lewis.

I dont think i would be too happy if it was my kids school. My kids wear the green people sunscreen that is mineral based, i wouldnt want to swap to a chemical based all day one.

I would happily send my children in thin long sleeved tops and trousers but that doesnt tally with school uniform requirements, looks like the school has checked summer dresses like the majority of schools from pic.

Whilst I can't cite chapter and verse, the comment about reduced exposure to sunshine leading to Vit D deficiency is something I read about last summer in Oz. Not only that, I also think there is some concern about some components of sun cream being absorbed by the skin (maybe the titanium dioxide???)and showing up in breast milk.

I think there is a generation of school children who have been guinea pigs in their use of sun cream.

Covering up with loose clothing and hats seems to be the best advice. Here in Oz we have a duty of care to protect children and schools do not allow children to play outside without hats - ( even this does not always cover them adequately because fashion recently has dictated wearing the brim backwards.)

Oooh - haven't tried an organic sun cream - thanks for idea littleducks. I will order. Still might mean my kids/me react to it but worth a try. Also still means it has to be reapplied yes?

Also, my kids eat quite a lot of ketchup (don't I have one who is food phobic. I'd rather him food if it has ketchup than not eat food. Anyway - my point is that lypocene (chemical in processed/cooked tomatoes is really good at protecting from the sun. In cave man days (something I often to refer to ) they wouldn't have had sun cream and so it must have been a mixture of staying in the cave during the heat of the day and eating foods which naturally protect them against burning that worked.

I bought DD a little straw hat for school breaks - she loved it but she is the only child in her class who goes to school with some kind of sun hat, so it is hard to get her to wear it regularly. And she has prescription sunglasses but is not allowed to take them to school

that's bad bonsoir - at least at my dcs school, they can't be outside without a hat...........unless they forget it, in which case, they forget all that and make them go out! Wouldn't you think they would keep some spare hats?

Ds2 is only 3 and a half but he has eczema and can only use Aveeno on his skin and the Aveeno sun cream. He'll be needing his reapplied in hot weather though, he's only at pre-school now so it isn't an issue. They are really good though and have asked for the children to have sun cream in their bags.

I think it's crap. But there are some very odd childcare practices at DD's school - the lack of sun care provision is one, the junk food diet at the canteen another. The headmistress has never had children of her own and I think her awareness of some of the more basic aspects of childcare pass her by entirely.

whoever said you can't burn in 20-30mins clearly isn't red haired and freckly

i use a piz buin all day long sunscreen but even STILL if i put it on at 8am and i've sweated a lot i'd need a top up before going out for 20mins at 2pm.

some people should not make judgements about other people's capacity for burning.

exactamondo fluffles.

Dd has the green people sun cream too. I don't like to just put it on her every day - there's hardly any sun some mornings. Fortunately dd's primary allows kids to take their creams and apply it themselves. Doesn't seem to cause any problems.

you can burn during a school playtime, i would do, 10 mins in the midday sun and i'm a lobster. factor 50+ once a day and to cover up as much as possible works for me though.

This really takes the pee.
DD came back from school today saying the school had taken them to the secondary school (they walked) but she forgot to pick up her hat from her peg and they wouldn't go back for it. She was told she couldn't go back when they were only about 300m away. So they had to go do sports on the astroturf for nearly two hours with no hat. It wasn't just her. Would you think they would check that every single child had their hat before leaving???? That's how thick they are.

I don't remember wearing a hat or sun cream whilst playing outside at school. I never burned at school ever. I did burn in the summer holidays (several times) but I really think a lot of the posts on this thread are way OTT.

OP - how old is your DD? I don't think the school is at fault for not letting her go back for her hat - she should have remembered it in the first place, and if they'd all had to wait for her, then the whole group would have been held up. When are children going to be allowed (or made) to take responsiblity for their own belongings?

She is 8, but as I said earlier, due to the school's (TA's) lack of sun knowledge, she had a dangerous bout of sunstroke the week before last and yes, she's old enough to remember her hat (I told her she should have remembered it) but the teachers should have checked they all had them. A quick "has everyone got their hat?" would surely have solved the problem,
I don't think it's being OTT at all - you've obviously never had sun stroke ET?

You reckon?

I've acutally had sunstroke more than once, and once ended up in A&E with sunburn (all of this as an adult, not as a child)

IME though, sunstroke needs prolonged exposure to the sun. If she has a hat at school, why was she not wearing it and how long was she in the sun for in order to get really nasty sunstroke?

This was on my other thread last week. She was on the playing field for the whole morning followed by the TA making her sit in open sun on the playground in the afternoon.

If you've had sunstroke then you surely know how ill you feel and how dangerous it can be?

On the day she had sunstroke, she had forgotten to take her hat (yes, that's her and my fault) but the school still havea 'duty of care' and should have made sure she wasn't in the hot sun for that long.

Yes, I do know how foul sunstroke can be - I got in whilst in Paris one summer and spent the whole journey home throwing up.

Soem people seem tob e more susceptible to sun stroke than others. Dh has got it during a round of golf, whereas I can be out for the same length of time with no ill effect.

I suspect that fact that he is balding thinning on top and I have really thick hair (fine but loads of it) is part of the answer.

Also, I dom't know if it is because the ozone layer is thinner, but people do seem to burn much more quickly nowadays. As a child in the 60s, I cold spend all day outside with no ill effect, only ever using sun tan lotion on holiday (and my dad was a docotr, so we were using factor 6 - the strongest avaialbe in those days - long before it was "fashionable") where now I can burn if I spend an hour outside with no protection.

My daughter's primary school (which she left last Summer) said - and still say in their newsletters - that they will use Boots Soltan on all children unless they parents don't want them to, in which case please send in a labelled bottle or tube of lotion of choice. Also they absolutely insist everyone wears sunhats when outside in this weather. In fact, they said that anyone not wearing a sunhat at sports day would not be allowed to take part!
My daughter's secondary school suggested that all girls bring in a bottle of lotion of their choice and keep it in their lockers.
These seem very sensible policies to me.