They can show up as a skin rash within a year of birth, if the child is allergic to a food. Allergies to the environment are usually discovered when children start wheezing at 3 to 6 years old, after several seasons have sensitized them, according to Dr. Larry Williams, a Duke specialist in pediatric allergies. Allergies can also produce asthma, atopic dermatitis and eczema. Williams doesn't recommend testing for children with only mild symptoms, but those who haven't responded to first-line therapies and children with frequent wheezing need to be tested. Allergy shots are usually avoided in smaller children because the allergens to which they react may change over time.
Every doctor agrees that sun exposure boosts the risk of skin cancer.
But there's less consensus on how to protect your child from that risk. Pediatricians, for the most part, advise using sunscreen whenever a baby is in the sun. But dermatologists say to avoid sunscreen on infants under 1 year old . Duke pediatric dermatologist Dr. Neil Prose says the confusion stems from yet-unproven concern over babies' skin, which is thinner, more sensitive to allergens and more plentiful in ratio to their body weight than adults' skin. Theoretically, the chemicals in sunscreen could, if absorbed, travel via the bloodstream to the developing brain, he said.