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Playgrounds are a pure joy to watch. Children experiment and dream with unbridled optimism. One elementary school in Carson City, by itself, houses over 600 future teachers, healers and leaders. It is a parent’s best dream to envision a bright, healthy, productive future for our children. Sometimes fear overtakes us, as we live with the daily reminders of our world’s very-real threats to those futures. Many of those fears are born of the very-real adult perspectives we have on environmental risks - like crime, drug use and violence. Some are born of our sad and painful battles with the deteriorating health of friends, neighbors, families or Self. As we get older, our fears sometimes get bigger. As parents and caretakers to our next generation, what can we do?

One suggestion is to nurture our children’s love for learning, their natural impulses to explore and grow, their confidence in themselves and their abilities to share personal strength with others. Does your child help others, share his/ her triumphs, and respect their environment? What great lessons these are, and how simple to us more experienced adult role-models!

Playgrounds are a pure joy to watch. Can we prevent the eventual growing-up of these little ‘free spirits’? No, not so much. No matter how tempted some of us are to freeze them at a ‘perfect age’. One thing we can do is to encourage them to learn through play, to learn to interact with each other respectfully, to make smart decisions that will make their goals easier to reach. We can love them and teach them. We can model ‘smart living’ through our personal choices.

Most of us have repeated daily reminders that no matter how often we feel we have little or no influence over our environment, we do indeed have the power of personal choice. We can be smarter consumers, we can eat better, exercise more, recycle more. We can actively participate in our community. Our children rely on us to model adulthood in the most positive, responsible and productive way. Let’s start with play. How do we play ‘smart’? We play ‘smart’ by adopting safe-behaviors, taking care of ourselves and encouraging our peers to do the same.

As one of 10 nationwide finalists in Neutrogena’s recent Sun Proof Your Community contest, we at Al Seeliger Elementary School in Carson City, have an opportunity to win a sun shade cover valued at approximately $15,000 for our playground. This may just be one small step in reminding our kids how important it is to take care of themselves – but it certainly is a ‘smart’ one! We can’t watch over them personally as often as many of us want to , or should, but we can encourage our schools to continue to do so, to the best of their abilities. Since 1973 alone, the cases of melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, has risen approximately 150% (1). Children spend several hours at school on most weekdays, and some of that time is spent in outdoor activities. Many people don’t realize that approximately 80 percent of sun exposure is incidental, meaning it happens unintentionally during everyday activities while walking a dog or when children are outside for recess (1).

Let’s strive to raise a community of strong, resilient and thoughtful individuals. Let’s support our children in their schools and playgrounds. Help the kids out at Seeliger Elementary by voting for their school in the Neutrogena/ Choose Skin Health, Sun Proof Your Community Contest on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ChooseSkinHealth. Voting begins Sept. 7 and ends on Sept. 22. One person, one vote. One community, one child at a time.