help your child to be sunsmart this summer

With the weather heating up again this week, I thought it would be an idea to post a reminder about how to help your little ones (and, of course, yourself) stay SunSmart this Summer.

You can't go a moment these days without reading or hearing about the high risk to Australians of skin cancer, and rightly so - more than 440,000 Australians are diagnosed with skin cancer every year (source: Cancer Council SA). The biggest culprit? The sun.

Long gone are the days when children roamed free throughout summer wearing little more than their birthday suit. Damage to a child's skin begins with their first exposure to the UV radiation from the sun, and skin damage caused by this exposure builds up over the years, increasing a child's risk of developing skin cancer (source: Cancer Council SA).

Luckily, there are simple ways to help protect your child's skin, and many resources available to help parents to access information about being SunSmart.

I have found the Cancer Council SA website to be really useful - it spells out the latest 5-step approach to being SunSmart (yes, gone also are the days of merely "slip, slop, slap"!) and has a great fact sheet "Skin Protection and Young Children".

I know that many young children (my toddler included) suffer from sensitive skin, and this fact sheet has some tips for buying sunscreen for such skin. After trialling a few myself, I have found the Hamilton's range (both the Toddler and Sensitive skin versions) to be the least irritable on my son's eczema-prone skin. We're currently using the roll-on versions, as my son thinks it's fun to "paint" his body with the sunscreen. I'd love to hear from you about other brands you've found to be low-irritant for your little ones.

There is a decent range of protective swimwear now available, and it's not all cartoons and garish colours! Once again, the Cancer Council is a good source of this clothing, stocking UPF50+ outfits and accessories which are fairly plain. Another good online retailer of protective swimwear is Sun + Snow.

Broad brimmed hats are a must, with a brim of 6cm for children. I'm currently loving the Oobi Baby range for girls (pictured is the Red Dot Bridgette Sunhat). A huge range is available online at Baby's Got Style, and Kidzone also stocks selected items in store. For boys, I can't go past the star hats from Parade.

For trips to the beach, a cabana is also a good idea. The Cancer Council stocks them, but I've also seen them at Ray's Outdoors, Big W and Target in the past.