Teaching your tween or teen to care of their young, delicate skin at an early age can bring rewarding and beneficial results. Suppose they are already experiencing frustrating bouts with acne, an oily t-zone, or embarrassing flakey skin patches. Our goal is to help you help them before this happens, but regardless we're here to provide safe and effective skin care tips to guide your tween or teen through the learning process.
Knowing their skin and how to care for it are the first steps to adopting a lasting, healthy skincare routine. From kid skincare to tween skincare, they’re never too young to start. We’ve created the ultimate list of skincare tips to help you introduce your kids to a proper routine today!
Top 10 Skin Care Tips for Young Skin
- Know your skin type
- Use the products meant for your skin type
- Practice daily face washing
- Remove your makeup before bed
- Always wear sunscreen
- Avoid unhealthy foods
- Hydrate
- Never pick or pop pimples
- Wash your hands often
- Keep your phone clean
Skin Care Tip #1: Know Your Skin Type
One of the first steps to teaching your child about proper kid skincare is knowing their skin type. Knowing their skin's ins and outs helps them learn best practices and healthy, useful skin care tips that will work for them and their individual concerns. Since different skin types require different care, knowing and recognizing their tween skin issues will help them understand their needs.
There are many beneficial skincare tips for every skin type, but knowing where they fall is half the battle. Help your child understand their skin concerns and type, then guide them through the process of choosing kid skincare products that support, clear, hydrate, and properly nourish their tween skin.
Following appropriate skincare tips according to skin type will get them off to a great start. So, where does your child's tween skin fall? Let's have a look at the general skin type categories and common issues and characteristics of each:
Oily Skin Type
Oily tween skin produces an excess of sebum.
It tends to exhibit the following characteristics:
- An all-day glossy sheen, even after recently blotting or washing
- Visibly enlarged pores
- An above-average number of blemishes
- Acne inflammation, reoccurrence, and scarring
- Acne on the back and/or chest
- Redness around blemishes from irritation, infection, and inflammation
Normal Skin Type
Tweens with normal skin types often experience evenly balanced characteristics, unlike their oily and dry tween skin peers. Normal skin typically experiences fewer blemishes, sensitivities, and discoloration of the skin. Kid skincare products for normal skin types support their natural balance and help maintain the appearance of smaller pores and a healthy glow.
Dry Skin Type
Dry tween skin produces less sebum, which keeps their skin from being adequately hydrated. Knowing this will help you select kid skincare products that support additional moisture retention.
You'll recognize your child's dry skin by:
- Flaking skin
- Dry, rough patches
- Itching or cracking
- Redness without the appearance of blemishes
Combination Skin Type
A combination skin type can be challenging to manage because tween skin can be oily in certain areas and dry in others. These areas may also change with the weather, making it frustrating to help them maintain a daily kid skincare routine. Your teenager’s T-zone—the forehead, nose, and chin—will likely be oily, while the rest of their face may look and feel normal or dry. Kids and teens with combination skin tend to have larger pores, making their blackheads a bit more apparent.
Sensitive Skin
A variety of factors can cause your tween's sensitive skin. Some sensitivities are due to allergies, while others stem from underlying skin disorders, such as rosacea and eczema. Even environmental factors, such as too much exposure to the sun, can cause skin flare-ups that require sensitive treatments. Skin sensitivity is more difficult to recognize in tween skin and treat appropriately on their own, so your guidance is beneficial.
Skin Care Tip #2: Use Products Meant for Your Skin Type
Not everyone’s skin is the same, and it's vital for your child to realize this fact. What works for a friend may not be what works for them; what one sibling experiences may not be their experience. After determining the type of skin your tween has, it’s essential to fit them with the gentle tween skin and kid skincare products that target that skin category.
For instance, sensitive skin is easily irritated, tends to feel dry and itchy, or may react with breakouts or rashes after trying a new product. If this describes your tween, they require a kid skincare line specially formulated for sensitive skin needs. Products for sensitive concerns help calm and soothe the skin while restoring balance and reducing inflammation.
If their skin tends to be oily, shiny, and prone to acne attacks, choosing a kid skincare line to fight infection, inflammation, and breakouts are in order. Products such as the Z-Blast Spot Treatment with 2% salicylic acid help fight those stubborn, reoccurring zits your tween wants to banish. Since your tween’s oily skin produces more oil than it needs, help them understand the importance of cleansing at least twice a day with a kid skincare cleanser formulated to keep acne at bay.
While helping your tween discover the best kid skincare products and proper routine can be tricky, we hope the remaining skincare tips help.
Skin Care Tip #3: Practice Daily Face Washing
Healthy, happy skin starts with daily face washing. Each day, their skin battles bacteria, pollutants, dirt, oil, and dead skin cells. We teach our kids to wash their hands several times a day for many of these same reasons. So, why is it that we don’t ensure they treat their face with the same respect?
If you begin to notice their tween skin is experiencing issues or sensitivities, proper face washing is a vital skincare tip to implement immediately, even at a young age.
Monitor their young skin for the beginning signs of:
- clogged pores
- blackheads
- whiteheads
- blemishes
- acne breakouts
Their young, delicate skin needs to breathe freely to prevent the issues that cause these concerns. Implementing a daily face washing routine and other skincare tips for tween skin will make a tremendous difference in the appearance, texture, and overall health of their skin.
Introducing your child to a kid skincare line with a gentle face wash is ideal. When you invest in a kid skincare cleanser explicitly formulated for young tween skin, you eliminate harsh chemicals and unnecessary ingredients that may strip away natural oils.
Teach your child to use their cleanser several times a day for optimal results, including:
- As soon as they wake up
- After exercise or play
- Before bedtime
Skin Care Tip #4: Remove Makeup Before Bed
If your tween is beginning to wear makeup, no matter how little or light, it's imperative they learn proper cleansing and skincare tips to avoid breakouts. Even makeup formulated for young tween skin should be removed before bed with the help of a gentle cleanser. Removing traces of makeup before bed is essential, as it helps prevent skin irritation and breakouts due to the clogging of pores. Sleeping with their makeup on can also irritate tween skin that suffers from dryness. Help them learn the necessity of forming healthy routines from the start.
Skin Care Tip #5: Always Wear Sunscreen
Sunscreen isn't just an excellent skincare tip; it's vital from kid skincare to tween skin. Your child's delicate skin is exposed to harmful UV rays even on the cloudiest of days. The need to wear sunscreen regularly must be taught at a young age. Proper protection of their young skin begins with a sunscreen designed especially for kid skincare. Using sunscreen free from chemicals and harmful ingredients protects their tween skin in more ways than one. A daily sunscreen made with delicate skin in mind reduces skin cancer risks, supports a healthy surface of their skin, and reduces redness, discoloration, and scarring from acne.
If your child plays sports, it's vital to stress the importance of proper sunscreen use and reapplication.
Additional top sunscreen skincare tips include:
- Applying sunscreen before your outdoor activity
- Reapplying sunscreen regularly if sun exposure is lengthy or sweating or water reduces coverage
- Invest in a dedicated kid skincare line with products made from natural ingredients, such as Kidskin's Daily Sunscreen SPF30
Skin Care Tip #6: Avoid Unhealthy Foods
While we realize this skincare tip may be more challenging than the others, we urge you to introduce your child to a healthy, well-balanced diet at a young age. The love of healthy foods and the knowledge to support healthy eating habits will benefit their young skin for years to come and enhance their kid skincare routines.
Unhealthy eating habits can impact their battle with skin concerns, including acne, painful inflammation, and scarring. Loading up on foods high in fats, sodium, and sugar can promote additional oil production, resulting in prolonged breakouts. Help your child learn to choose fruits and veggies over fast-food and sugary drinks. While the occasional snack won't hurt, choosing to feast on fried or processed foods too often may result in inflammatory responses in the skin, triggering a long battle with skin irritations.
Skin Care Tip #7: Hydrate Often
Hydrating is critical to your child's overall health and the success of their kid skincare routine. Their skin will stay full of moisture with a radiant glow they can be proud of if proper hydration is routine. Their water intake supports fighting off infections, cleansing impurities, and fighting dry skin patches.
Teaching your child the importance of drinking enough water provides skin benefits such as:
- Less acne
- Smooth skin texture
- Even skin tone
- Quicker healing time
Skin Care Tip #8: Never Pick or Pop Pimples
It happens. It's an urge that even we, as parents, found hard to resist. But instilling this critical skin care tip from a young age will help your child understand the repercussions of popping their zits. Let your child know you've been through the same experience—the embarrassing head of a pimple, the pain and irritation that accompanies it, and the incredible urge to squeeze, even if just for a second. More times than not, popping and picking will cause more harm than good.
Picking at or popping pimples may increase irritation, causing additional redness, soreness, and inflammation. Add to this the likelihood that your tween neglects to wash their hands first, and it increases their risk of infection, scarring, and a repeat pimple. Instead, teach your child safe zit-fighting skincare tips that will reduce swelling, redness, and longer-lasting pimple heads. With proper care, treatments, and a gentle kid skincare line, they'll be better equipped to deal with the urges of picking and choose to treat instead.
Skin Care Tip #9: Wash Hands Often
While it may seem like this is a no-brainer, washing hands often is a skincare tip worth repeating. Just think of all the time your child's hands touch their face, spreading germs, dirt, and bacteria to their delicate skin. Washing their hands, or at the very least, using an anti-bacterial solution, can cut down the spread of these pore-clogging threats tremendously. Frequent hand washing is a skincare tip we cannot recommend enough.
Skin Care Tip #10: Keep Cell Phones Clean
Yes, it's up there on our top skincare tips for your child. Next to your child's hands, their phone is the thing to touch their skin most, spreading dirt and grime to their pores. If you notice blemishes popping up on their chin, cheeks, or hairline often, it's time to talk with them about phone cleanliness. Phones touch countertops, desks, pockets, backpacks, and likely the hands of their peers. Now imagine all those germs transferring to their face. While a gentle kid skincare cleanser helps fight dirt, germs, and inflammation, it's best to start with and maintain proper phone hygiene.
Teach your tween the essentials of proper skincare and the top ten tips they can begin implementing today.