As the mom of four very fair-skinned children I've always slathered them in sunscreen. Better safe than sorry, right? Now information is coming to light which makes me want to pull my hair out. It all started when I read a recent post from the mom blogger at Jungletwins. The sun is dangerous, but now my sunscreen could be, too? What is a mom to do?
We have, so far, avoided sun burns. That in itself is amazing, considering my daughters seem to turn red if you even mention the word "sun." Hubby jokes that he burns faster than an Irish vampire. We are very conscious of how much sun we all expose ourselves to.
My daughters will wear sunglasses with no problems. Hats? Those stay on for about five minutes before I'm suddenly carrying them.
Do I want to protect my daughters from the sun? Absolutely. I just may need to rethink how I'm going to do that.
4 comments:
We've had a lot of luck with Blue Lizard sunscreen. Like I commented on Jungletwins post, when someone else does the application (school) then I use a chemical based sunscreen. But at home, we use Blue Lizard. After they go in the pool, we reapply.
And generally it's easy for us to avoid the worst of the sun since that's when they nap, but in the south, it's always sunny!
The chemicals in sunscreen have always bothered me - in part because as a teen I had bad skin reactions to a couple of them. At the same time, my FIL died of melanoma at 47 (first diagnosed when he was only 26), so sun safety is something we take seriously in our house.
The "safer" sunscreens like Blue Lizard can be very difficult to put on and have to be re-applied more frequently, so I do sometimes use the chemical kind instead. I always wash my kids off once they come inside, so it's not sitting on their skin for hours, and we avoid being outdoors during peak sun hours.
I can't get my kids to keep sunglasses OR hats on, got any sunglasses tricks?
I keep hearing about Blue Lizard... but I also keep hearing how hard it is to apply. Ack! As for keeping on hats or sunglasses... I ask them if they want to wear them. If they say yes I tell them I'm not going to carry them if they get tired of the glasses or hats. For some reason that seems to be working.
Oh gosh, sorry to freak you out! I had a total meltdown when I heard what went into sunscreen and felt I had to blow the whistle. In defense of blue lizard, I have no trouble getting it on my girls. I think it's the smoothest of the non toxic types and stays on quite well. My girls have played on hot beaches all day, where we live in the tropics, and never been burnt.
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