Everything in Moderation - Even Hedonism

I was absolutely inspired for this one after reading (yet another) series of articles and editorials in various parenting magazines tauting the virtues of protecting children from any and all exposure to sunlight. Recommendations included not only generous slathering of sunscreen, but my personal favorite: having children wear - and I am not making this up - high-necked, long-sleeved and long-legged brightly colored or dark (because white isn't protective enough) clothing - in the summertime, on the beach, when it is presumably about 95 degrees.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Look, I don't dispute that skin cancers are both dangerous and on the rise. And I don't believe it's fair to my children to send them out at noon every day, carelessly shunning sunscreen in favor of a good burn so they'll get a nice "base." But covering every inch of their little bods on a hot day when the whole point of going to a beach is to ENJOY THE SUN? No. I am drawing the line in the sand, my friends.

Let's have a little perspective, eh? For every woman profiled in the article on skin cancer, there are dozens of us who have spent hours in the sun playing outdoors as kids, who even with a sunburn or two in our history have no evidence of skin cancer. That doesn't mean we're immune, it just means that the statistics tend to only highlight the worst case scenarios, not the millions of people who turned out just fine. Each of those skin cancer victims, I might add, confessed to having been a sun bunny, a tanning-bed fanatic, or an otherwise tan-addicted sun-worshipper who went out of her way to get UV exposure throughout her youth. And that means I should ensure my children look like "Powder"? I am not going to risk heat stroke by putting my child in a dark blue turtleneck just to protect him from the sun. Puh-lease.

Once again, it's not about abstinence, folks, it's about moderation. Children need protection, true, but they also need sunlight. There are an increasing number of medical studies now pointing to the dangers of depriving kids of sunlight altogether. Vitamin D deficiencies are just one of several important side effects of sun-shunning, but they illustrate the point nicely: one extreme can be just as deadly as the other in the long run.

I put sunscreen on the kids when I know we'll be out in the sun for a long time. (And yes, overcast days count, but when we're going to be outdoors in a primarily shaded area, no, I don't bother.) We go to the beach from 9:00 to about 11:00 or so, then come back inside for lunch and a nap during the peak UV hours, returning (if we're so inclined) in the late afternoon when it's just as sunny and fun, but less dangerous. We don't go out of our way to be in the sun just for the sake of sunning ourselves, but we don't hide inside either. We will teach them, as they grow older, to be responsible about the sun and that tanning beds and tans are not smart. But that's it. Beyond that, it's not precaution, it's panic-induced paranoia. Children need to have a life, and that life includes time in the sun to just be kids. Otherwise, we risk having them turn into housebound, overweight, video-game-addicted couch potatoes...oh, wait...