I've never been one to force my kids to wear coats when they don't want to (though I sometimes force them to bring a coat when I suspect they're going to need it). It bugs me when teachers or others with temporary responsibility for my kids force them to wear more clothes than they want to. First of all, there is no reason to engage in power struggles with kids when they are perfectly capable of regulating their own temperatures.
More significantly, however, adults could actually be doing children harm by forcing them to wear more clothes than they want. Here's why:
1. Children are more tolerant of the cold.
In my observation, many children are naturally more tolerant of cold temperatures than adults. This despite the fact that their smaller size should render them more susceptible to the cold (because they have a much higher ratio of surface area to volume).
2. Human beings actually adapt and adjust to different temperatures
First, I have also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence from people moving to colder or hotter climes that they get used to it after a year or two.
But also, a renowned scientist named Laurence Irving did body temperature regulation experiments at the University of Alaska in the 1960s. According to this article, Irving
noticed with great curiosity two UAF [University of Alaska Fairbanks] students who walked around campus barefoot, even in winter. In accordance with their religious beliefs, the students wore only light clothing and wore no shoes or socks....
Irving convinced the students to sit for him in a room cooled to about 32 degrees. The students were allowed to wear light clothing, and Irving measured the temperatures of their fingers, toes and chest as they sat for an hour and studied.
For comparison, Irving recruited a "vigorous young airman" to undergo the same test. After 30 minutes, "the airman's toes became so painful and he began to shiver so violently that I caused him to terminate the test lest he shake himself apart," Irving wrote.
The students who walked barefoot on snow every day didn't begin shivering until after almost 50 minutes in the room.... The study was an illustration of how humans can acclimate their bodies to cold weather and eventually feel little pain while walking barefoot in the snow, Irving wrote.
I came across this account through my interest in barefooting, the astute reader will gather, but it has wider implications (according to this article barefooting in Alaska winters is still going on -- though it can't be too common or it wouldn't merit a newspaper article!)
This New York Times article says that people can also adjust to hotter temperatures:
The process is called heat acclimation and is routinely seen in athletes training in hot weather. At first their internal temperatures climb, they sweat profusely, lose large quantities of salt in their sweat and feel miserable. But as the days pass they sweat even more, their salt loss diminishes, both skin and internal temperatures drop, and their endurance improves. . . .
And it took only a week or so for the research subjects in the California desert to develop high sweat rates, low pulse rates and low rectal temperatures. They could work more comfortably, with greatly improved well-being.
3. As a result of these two facts, two conclusions follow:
- One person's judgment of how cold it is, is not necessarily accurate for another, especially for children.
- Making kids wear unnecesary layers will just ruin their adaptation to the cold. Aside from being inconvenient, and seeming generally a pity, this could potentially add to a child's risk of obesity since the metabolic changes necessary to tolerate more cold presumably use up more calories.
I say, let children regulate their own temperature!
All this could also have implications for adults as well: I once heard of a couple who swore that they were able to stay thin by sleeping with only a sheet, never using a blanket. Maybe there was something to that.
Comments