Understanding Child Skin Rashes

Storybooks might make you think childhood is filled with sugar, spice, and soft goodnight kisses. In reality, your young one’s tender years will likely be fraught with itches, irritations, and uncomfortable patches from something your child ate, was bitten by, or somehow rolled in. It helps to be familiar with common child skin rashes, so you’ll know what to expect, what the causes are, and how to deal with these dermatitis dilemmas. Some child skin rashes are simply the cause of getting into something inappropriate. Common offenders include poison ivy and other irritating plants. You’ll know poison ivy’s handiwork by tiny blisters on the skin, accompanied by very uncomfortable itching and burning skin. Help your children learn to recognize which plant patches to stay out of to avoid repeated incidents. In other cases, your child’s skin rash can be blamed on something you’ve (unintentionally) done. Allergy skin rashes can often be traced to irritants in soaps or lotions, or to a food that doesn’t agree with your offspring. A skin rash can, in some cases, indicate a common childhood illness, such as the chicken pox or measles. Learn to recognize these conditions – chicken pox begins as flat spots that burgeon into blisters, then turn crusty, while the measles begin with fever, coughing, and nasal and eye irritation even before facial spots begin to appear. Sometimes, a child skin rash has only genetics to blame. In many families, eczema is hereditary, and results in cracked, blistered skin that, if left unchecked, can turn thick and leathery. You will also want to keep an eye out for rashes that can indicate a potentially life threatening disease. Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, both spread through tick bites, are serious conditions with symptoms that include a rash. In these cases, though, your child’s skin rash will also be accompanied – and sometimes preceded – by other symptoms such as a very high temperature, which will warn you that something more serious may be wrong. Children can also experience hives, which resemble mosquito bites. This skin rash indicates an allergic reaction to substances such as a food or medicine, or a bad response to a bite or sting. If hives are accompanied by problems breathing, seek emergency assistance right away.