Whilst sun cream is important in summer to keep your kids skin protected, winter and the cold, harsh weather it brings can create a whole other set of problems for their health, including their skin.

Keeping their skin warm and dry is one of the biggest things for me. If they end up in school with wet clothes, it can make for a pretty uncomfortable day, but it can also lead to runny noses and bad coughs. We’re lucky we now have access to a car to take us to school every day if needed but when we didn’t, I used to put their school shoes in their bags and they’d wear wellies and a wet suit over their school clothes. When they got to school, I took their wellies from them as they put on their school shoes and I took their wetsuits home to dry off before pick up time.

Hats, scarves and gloves are vital when it starts to get really, really cold. Again, they can stop children from catching colds, flu or even frost bite. For my daughter, I change her school socks to thick tights and her school shoes to winter boots.

If they do end up catching a cold, because sometimes despite your best efforts they can catch them, and their nose is all blocked, they tend to breathe through their mouth resulting in quite dry lips. Licking them to take away the dryness and then stepping out in to the cold can make them worse leading to very sore, cracked lips. We use a lot of lip balm in the winter to try and overcome this. Aside from having a huge pot of the stuff in the house which we apply before we leave, we have smaller tubes that we can carry out with us. My children each have one that they take in their school jacket pockets meaning they can keep their lips soft throughout the school day.

For any dry bits of skin, especially on the face or hands from exposure to the cold weather, I use a bit of moisturising cream. Recently I’ve been using AproDerm^® as it is gentle enough to use on the kids’ skin without triggering any sort of reaction and leaves their skin feeling really soft and protected.