I have owned and operated my own Daycare for over 25 years. I have seen all kinds of children come through my doors – and I must say when I enroll a fair skinned, red headed child, I always take extra time to discuss my policies about sunscreens. The state that licensed me has warned me that the parent should supply their own sunscreens for their children. The reason for this is to protect me. If I put something on their child that he is allergic to, it is a liability for me. So, when summer rolls around, all my daycare moms have to supply both sunscreen (with their child’s name on the bottle) and bug spray.
I have had a few times when children got some mild sunburns while under my care, and over the last 25 years I have learned from my experiences to apply sunscreen before we even step foot outdoors. The product will have a chance to absorb nicely and start working by the time we get out in the sun. One time we had the swimming pool out and didn’t apply the sunscreen as often as we should have, and a three year old boy – of course with red hair – burned the top of his ears quite badly! They were so red they almost matched his hair!
When it comes to buying sunscreen for their kids, my daycare mom’s brand of choice is, over whelmingly, Coppertone Water BABIES SPF 45. The majority of my children’s cubbies have these pink bottles stowed away in them. This stuff works, but there are still some precautions to take and rules to follow.
(1) Shake the bottle and apply to all exposed areas at least 15 minutes before sun exposure.
(2) Pay special attention to the sensitive areas that are getting more direct sunlight, such as the tops of the ears, the nose, the shoulders, neck and the head if possible. (I always get burned on the top of my head, in my part, and I have yet to figure out how to apply sunscreen there without getting it in my hair).
(3) If your child is swimming, running through a sprinkler, or sweating a lot, be sure and reapply sunscreen often.
(4) Keep away from the eyes.
(5) Try to avoid being out during the peak hours when the suns rays are the strongest. I have read that the hours between 10 am and 4 pm are the worst. Personally I try to avoid the rays between noon and 2 pm – but I live in Alaska and we can’t apply the same rules up here.
(6) If you child is really fair skinned, put a cap or sun bonnet on their heads!
(7) Apply sunscreen even on cloudy days, remember that 80% of the suns rays are still getting through!
Sunscreens work by absorbing the UV rays by forming a barrier on the skin. It is also important to buy a broad spectrum sunscreen – one that has both UVA and UVB protection. Coppertone for babies has both. In fact, in 1980 Coppertone was the first company to come out with a sunscreen that had the broad spectrum protection.
Coppertone’s Water BABIES is water proof, has a SPF of 50, is hypoallergenic, has UVA and UVB protection, is gentler for a child’s sensitive skin, will block out about 95% of the suns UV rays, is for children 6 months and older (unless your physician states otherwise), and is PABA free. PABA is a common ingredient in sunscreens, and while it works, it can also stain clothing and sting when applied. The company claims that this product will remain waterproof for as long as 6 hours, but this is not what I have experienced. I apply it every hour or so when kids are in the water. Especially if they are getting towel dried and going back into the water. It seems only natural that towel drying would just remove some of the sunscreen from their skin. And it smells good too – something about these lotions, they smell “tropical”! It glides on smoothly and is easy to apply, which is also an important factor when putting it on toddlers!
SPF is the guide for how long you can stay in the sun without getting burned. If you would normally get a burn in 1 hour, and you put on a SPF of 15, you should be able to stay out 15 times longer than normal without burning, if applied properly and as often as needed. Using that theory, that would mean that you could stay out for 15 hours before burning – obviously you need to reapply it during that 15 hours!
When looking for a sunscreen for children, look for one that has moisturizing ingredients in it. Read the label and look for “vitamin e, or tocopherol”, “jojoba”, “aloe vera”, “glycerin” and other moisturizers such as you would find in a hand cream. Kids need moisturizing as well as adults – probably more since they are out in the sun longer hours than adults are.
If your child is on prescription medications or antibiotics, please ask your Dr. or pharmacist about being in the sun while taking their medicines. My daughter was on an antibiotic when she was 13 years old, and I remember this incident like it was yesterday. It was her “end of the school year” play day … her class spent the entire day outside, and it happened to be on a very hot day! We sent her to school with a SPF 15 product, which she only applied once. She didn’t feel the sunburn until it was too late, and likewise her teachers and friends didn’t see any sunburn until the skin was already damaged. That’s the scary thing about sunburns, by the time you can see the redness or feel the pain, it is too late! The antibiotics she was on made her skin overly sensitive to the sun! She was very uncomfortable for several days! I felt so bad! She had to get on an airplane that evening and fly to Colorado to spend a month with her grandparents! They say that if you get a sunburn bad enough to cause blistering that that one occurrence can double you risk of getting skin cancer later on in life. Those are not statistics that I am comfortable with.
My younger brother was always starting fires during the summer time by taking a magnifying glass and holding it over a piece of paper until the paper started to burn. I swear he was a pyromaniac, but doing this as a science experiment with your children may be enlightening. Make sure they are supervised and show them the power of the sun to burn! Maybe this will make them realize how easily the sun burns, and just maybe they won’t complain the next time when you go to put sunscreen on them.
We have sunscreen everywhere. Stowed away in our camper, in our car and truck, in the upstairs and downstairs medicine cabinets, and even in a backpack that we take on hikes. You can’t have too many bottles of sunscreen when summer time rolls around. My husband gets skin cancer on his face, and I feel confident that Coppertone Water Babies will protect him, and he doesn’t mind that it is marketed for “babies”, this is a great product for anyone. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Active Ingredients:
Avobenzone (3%) (Sunscreen), Homosalate (13%) (Sunscreen), Octisalate (5%) (Sunscreen), Octocrylene (7%) (Sunscreen), Oxybenzone (4%) (Sunscreen).
Inactive Ingredients:
Water, Sorbitol, Aluminum Starch, OctenylSuccinate, VP/Eicosene Copolymer, Stearic Acid, Triethanolamine, Sorbitan Isostearate, Benzyl Alcohol, Dimethicone, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Polyglyceryl 3 Distearate, Fragrance, Methylparaben, Carbomer, Propylparaben, Disodium EDTA.
An 8 ounce bottle retails for $10.00, and ours lasted all summer.
