Possums may be safe, but as hard as it may be to believe, dolphins are susceptible to sunburn, especially on their pale bellies.

Another tip to mention is be sure to remember to apply sunscreen even on feet and, if possible, have your kids wear water shoes for sun protection on the tops and sharp object protection on the bottoms.

I still have scars (ok, discolored patches) on the tops of my feet from a cloudy day at Sea World in San Diego 5 or 6 years ago where the sun hit in-between the straps of my sandals. Sunburned feet are agonizing!

And don't forget the ears! It's fairly easy to slather on the sunscreen on the noticeable areas, but some of these sneaky spots like ears & feet are really painful if they're overlooked and get burned.

If I were a(n) opossum (what's with the o anyway), I'd rather take my chances with the sun than crossing the road in the dark of night... I bet I'd live longer.

Thanks for the good topic. As a survivor of skin cancer at 25, I'm particularly paranoid about this with my own kids. Good choice!

Guys, your show is great and extremely timely this week. My wife and I were just having a discussion about the swim trunks with t-shirts vs. the body suites. I'm going to show her this episode so she can have some other opinion (mine). We are just getting ready to take our boy on his first week long beach vacation, so this info was so helpful.

If your kid resists hats, get ones with chin straps. My 16-month-old put up a hissy the first few times, but ultimately decided hats are fun. Now she wears them everywhere. Around the house. For a bath. (Okay, we didn't let her, but she considered it.)

Seriously, hats are SO important because they protect the un-sunscreenable scalp. And they look adorable! Take one wherever you go. Hats!

Oh, and PS -- my kiddo changed her mind when *I* started wearing hats my-own-self. I do believe that helped a lot.

Just yesterday we had our 16 month old outside. He has a hat with straps that I spent most of the time attempting to keep on his head. Who knew such a small kid could be so stubborn!?

Someone tell me this...how in the universe do you get your toddler to keep on sunglasses? His sunglasses may as well be a boomerang for the amount of times he gives them back or throws them off his head. We've tried to show him how much fun it is to wear them, but no luck! Help!

Lori, we just started trying to get our 2 yr old to wear glasses - not sunglasses, but the real things. Ugh!

Trick is, get some with the hoked ear piece or a strap so it's a little more trouble for him to get 'em off. Then keep his frenzied little grubby mitts as busy as you can to redirect his focus from the glasses to anything else. And prepare to put the glasses back on about a million times.

Here's a tip for keeping those big sun shelters from blowing away at the beach.
The pegs don't have much purchase in sand, but sand is a never ending resource at the beach.
Dig the corners of the shelter down about 8 inches Set the peg into the bottom of the hole attached to the corner. Then back fill the hole with sand covering the peg and corner in nice heavy sand. You may lose a little head room, but your shelter will be much more wind resistant.
Alternately, take some empty sacks or old pillow cases and fill them with sand at the beach and set them on top of the pegs to secure the shelter in place.
Get your kids in on the digging or sand bag filling as a game if you want.

I totally remember when I was a kid getting one enormous and really painful sunburn, and my skin peeled off in sheets (gross, but it felt good). Now I have to go to the dermatologist and have her keep track of my freckles... I have about a billion, so it's no easy task. So I'm trying to remember to put sunscreen on my nine-month-old religiously... I don't want her to go through what I went through.