My children and I are fair-skinned folks. So when my blond, blue-eyed daughter started camp last week, I diligently packed her sunblock — a stick for her face, a spray for the rest.
I labeled it with her name and stuck it in the front pocket of her backpack. So when she came home that day with cheeks red from sunburn, her sunscreen still in its packaging, I was, to understate the obvious, displeased.
An email to the camp director revealed two absurd pieces of information. First, my daughter told them she didn’t have sunblock — and their policy is to respect the child’s privacy and not check her bags.
After I stopped laughing about the privacy my child might require for a bag that contains, in total, her lunch, pool towel and sunscreen, I read the second piece of information, which seemed much more serious.
The counselors weren’t allowed to apply sunscreen to the children, only to remind them to do it and guide them in the process.
My child is 5. The idea she’d successfully apply sunscreen to all or most of her exposed body parts is laughable.
I did what any enraged person does these days: took to Facebook to register my complaints with my friends and acquaintances. I discovered that my daughter’s camp is not alone in its sunscreen insanity.
In states such as Colorado, camps inform parents that staff aren’t permitted to apply anything “except soap, water, or a Band-Aid to an open wound.” At least the kids get Band-Aids for their open wounds!
In Maryland, the state tried to institute a new policy directing “camps to steer counselors away from helping children apply sunscreen” and forbidding children from helping each other apply it. After an outcry from the American Academy of Dermatology, as well as outraged parents, Maryland reversed course: It now has parents sign a permission slip to allow application.
A New York state law passed in 2013 finally let kids carry sunscreen at school or camp. Before that, sunscreen was considered a “drug” and forbidden. Policy now requires kids to have a letter of permission from their parents on file with the school or camp.
As for someone else applying it on the child, the state Department of Health allows that — so long as they have the parents’ written permission. But many New York camps don’t seem to understand the rule. One Brooklyn camp claimed the law prohibited staff from applying sunscreen to campers at all.
The main reason camps are so skittish, however, comes back to our over-protective, over-litigious society. Camps are terrified that any touching between counselor and camper can be misconstrued and lead to charges of sexual abuse.
About the sunscreen madness, “Free-Range Kids” pioneer Lenore Skenazy says, “In our current pedophile panic, people have come to believe that any human contact between an adult and a child is prelude to molesting. But thinking about perversion all the time is perverted in itself. Sometimes sunscreen is just sunscreen.”
The fear of being sued, whether for invading a 5-year-old’s privacy by checking her bag or for touching a child while applying sunscreen, is pervasive.
“The concerns that camps have regarding counselors touching children are obvious, but under New York law, camps have a duty to exercise the same degree of care with respect to a child as would a reasonably prudent parent under similar circumstances,” said Tom Kretchmar, a matrimonial and family law attorney at Chemtob Moss & Forman in New York. And a prudent parent would certainly
double-check a child’s bag and make sure the sunscreen goes on everywhere.
I asked my daughter how she gets the sunscreen on her back. The answer? Her counselor does it for her. Somehow, the back is OK, but her face and front are protected areas.
In going overboard trying to protect the children, the result is actually less protection from real hazards like sun overexposure.
It’s ludicrous, and it needs to change.