There are thousands of things to learn about the skin you’re in, says the American Academy of Dermatology, and their Kids Skin Health website is geared toward helping youngsters get a grip on all of it. On the site, Sammy the Skin Cell talks to kids about their skin, hair and nails and points them to games, facts, a dictionary and more. Here’s a fun tidbit: It’s normal to lose 50 to 100 hairs a day, but anyone shedding a lot of hair should see a dermatologist. Also, about 85 percent of people battle acne at some time in their lives. Want more? Head over here.

Logo: kidsskinhealth.org

My oldest boy asked me recently, “How do we get freckles?” Somewhere buried in my head was the answer to this question — you know, something about skin pigment, melanin, the sun — but I wasn’t quite sure how to explain for an 8-year-old brain. My trusty laptop was nearby, though, so I did a quick search for, well, “How do we get freckles?” Some of what I found was heavy on the scientific, medical jargon — melanocortin-1 receptor MC1R gene variant, melanocytes, blah, blah, blah — and since I didn’t really understand it, I was pretty sure my second-grader wouldn’t either. So I kept searching, and I found this: “Freckling is caused by the uneven distribution of the melanin pigment in the skin. A freckle is essentially nothing more than an unusually heavy deposit of melanin at one spot in the skin.”

Now, that I understand. And so does my kid.

How would you explain freckles to your young ones?

photo by: fotologic on flickr