What is sun protection for children?
Particularly with children and babies, care should be taken to ensure complete sun protection. Their skin has little to no protection against the sun’s rays and reacts particularly sensitively to damage. Therefore, sun protection for children is understood to be a particularly intensive protection that meets the highest standards and should be tailored to all activities, such as bathing or sitting in a stroller or car.
Why do children and babies need special sun protection?
Children and babies need particularly good sun protection because their body’s own defense against damage from the sun is not yet fully developed. In the first years of life, the skin does not yet produce enough pigments to build up protection against the radiation. In addition, it still lacks the ability to adequately repair damage that has occurred.
Over the years, such damage can lead to cancer of the skin in babies and children. In addition, children in particular spend a lot of time outdoors in the sun and are therefore exposed to it longer than most adults. For these reasons, children and babies should only spend very short periods outside without sun protection or protect themselves from the radiation and thus prevent damage.
What are the possibilities of sun protection?
In the first year of an infant’s life, it should not be exposed to direct sunlight at all if possible. The child should always be given a place in the shade. Umbrellas or canopies can also provide good protection from the sun and protect the child from overheating.
Sunscreens such as creams and lotions should not be used in the first year of life, if possible, because they unnecessarily stress the sensitive baby skin. Later in preschool age, it is still true that the blazing sun should be avoided. The most effective protection is, of course, not only in shady places, but also in clothing that is suitable for the sun and which best shields the skin “from head to toe”.
Therefore, a sufficiently large cap or hat on the head is recommended, which protects the face and at best also covers the neck. The child’s clothing should fit loosely and cover as much skin as possible. Long-sleeved T-shirts and pants are ideal.
It should be noted that not every fabric offers sufficient protection. Modern clothing, specially produced for this purpose, contains a particularly high level of protection through a special weaving technique, which is marked “UV Standard 801”. Make sure that your child has at least 30 minutes of sun protection.
The feet should be largely covered by a light summer shoe. In addition to the clothing, all parts of the body that are not sufficiently covered should be creamed with a sun protection lotion that meets the highest possible requirements. The eyes of children should also be protected. For this purpose, especially when staying in the snow or at the water, we recommend wearing sunglasses with UV filters in addition to a headgear. This could be of interest to you: Baby skin care
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