Parenting in heat is exactly 44 per cent harder than it is in cooler conditions.
That’s a fact.
What else is true? That children don’t like suncream. At all.
With the recent heatwave in mind, we recall the eight harrowing stages of trying to put sun cream on a small person…
Stage 1:
The loud protesting will attract the attention of passing strangers. Try to remain passive and maintain a pleasant smile while wrestling with your child. DON’T get angry and shout as I once did “WHAT??? I’m trying to parent good.”
Stage 2:
You will find yourself betrayed by your own conscientiousness. By protecting them, you have unwittingly lubricated them so that they can escape your grasp much more easily.
Stage 3:
Somehow there will be more sunblock on you than them. Especially on your clothes.
Stage 4:
Everything will taste like sunblock for the rest of the day. I don’t know why this is exactly; it’s just one of life’s truths like how you only ever wake up early when you know you can have a lie in.
Stage 5:
As much as you try to prevent this by physically restraining them, they will rub the sunblock into their eyes. Through the howling, they will occasionally give you a look that says “Why have you betrayed me, mother?”
Stage 6:
Despite hating the sunblock and protesting the application of it to within an inch of their lives, they will at some point try to chug it from the bottle. And then blame you for it.
Stage 7:
Everything will become stuck to them – sand, dirt, cigarette butts, old tissues (our beach is not the cleanest of beaches) – and then be transported to your car or home.
Stage 8:
After a 10 minute struggle (which felt more like the Siege of Leningrad), some passing stranger will say “you better put some sunblock on that child”. Try not to lash out, they know not what they say.
