Growing up in Hawaii long before SPF was part of the ABCs of sun safety, I would regularly sport a mean red glow.
Back then, parents could douse their kids with baby oil and let them play in a yard of aluminum foil and no one would bat an eyelash.
Fast forward 25 years and those same parents would likely end up in jail or at least make headlines like Tan Mom for being so negligent.
When you know better, you do better, right?
It took a skin cancer scare to get me to break my bad habits, and now I am THAT Mom when it comes to keeping my kid slathered with sunscreen and in the shade during peak sun times.
In fact, I am such a freak when it comes to sun exposure that I regularly grease up my kid before she goes to school… and we live in Northern Wisconsin. So, imagine my shock when I tuned into the Today show on Monday and learned about the young girls from Tacoma, Washington, who suffered severe sunburns thanks to a crazy school policy.
It’s a story that will have you asking: What happened to common sense?
The incident involves Jesse Michener’s 11-and 9-year-old daughters, who returned from a school field day with second degree sunburns, earlier this month. According to Michener, the reason her girls came home as red as beets was due to a long standing school policy, which bans students from carrying sunscreen without a doctor’s note, and refuses to allow teachers to apply the lotion regardless of weather conditions.
A Today show legal expert noted that sunscreen bans are common throughout the United States and typically stem from state and local laws which prohibit kids from bringing drugs to school. Since sunscreens are regulated as over-the-counter drugs, many school districts ban them just to be safe.
Take one look at Michener’s daughters’ charred skin and the word “safe” doesn’t come to mind. In fact, viewing the Today show video makes me wonder how a school full of adult educators could possibly allow the girls to remain in the hot sun even though they look like steamed lobsters.
Ban or no ban, at some point common sense should prevail and those girls should have been ushered under a tree or back into the school building to avoid getting so severely burned.
On the bright side, since the incident (and major media attention) school officials have promised Michener that its sunscreen policy will be modified by fall.
Unfortunately, it took sacrificing two innocent kids’ health and well being to make a common sense change.
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