It’s a classic scene. The shivering kid with the blue lips and chattering teeth, who vehemently denies that he’s cold and refuses to get out of the pool. Does this mean that children are somehow more capable of enduring cold temperatures than adults? No. What it means is that children will universally resist any suggestion that they stop doing something fun. It means that children are acutely susceptible to peer pressure. It means that children take great, perverse pleasure in disobeying and alarming their parents. But it does not mean that they are less vulnerable to the cold. To the contrary, children are more susceptible to hypothermia and frostbite than adults. Kids cool faster than adults. And, due to a variety of factors – including size, heat generation, and vasomotor control – they are less able to thermoregulation in the cold. So when your kid is inebriated on sheer glee and seems oblivious to frigid temperatures, exercising some caustion is actually a very good idea.
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"Why can kids tolerate cold pool better than adults?" was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 12:54 pm.