Question from Sanda
My daughter has special needs. She has self-injury behaviors and sometimes aggression towards others, mostly due to her lack of communication skills, so she easily gets upset. Her current “reward” of reducing these behaviors that seems to be working for her, is receiving a temporary tatoo at the end of the day for good behavior. I am a very health conscious mom and only have ever used natural products on her including natural soap and shampoos, lotions, hair products, cotton clothing, organic bedding and organic mattress. I’m slowly turning her playroom into mostly natural products as well (cotton carpets, curtains, more wooden toys vs plastic). However, I worry that the only thing that is helping with her behaviors (the tatoos) could also be harming her health due to all of the synthetic dyes that I see are in body tattoos (despite the FBA claiming that they are safe). I use mostly the Melissa and Doug brand temporary body tatoos, but I am on a desperate hunt all over the internet to try to find a “plant based vegetable dye” temporary tatoo, if there even is such a thing. I know that there is vegetable dye play-doh and crayons, but I have had no luck finding natural temporary tatoos. I am also open to using kids stamps on her skin sometimes as a reward in place of a tatoo, but I also cant find any natural plant based stamps. My daughter enjoys the colorful pictures of the tatoos (so henna would not work). Please help if you know of any 🙂
Lisa’s Answer
Readers, any suggestions for safer tattoos?
The Melissa and Doug tattoos meet global safety standards but there are concerning ingredients that I would not want to use regularly on a child. Here is the information from the company:
The ingredients in our Temporary Tattoos are: Styrene/ butadiene copolymer, Paraffin, Rosin/ Colophane, Red 7 Lake (CI 15850), Blue 1 Lake (CI 42090), Yellow 5 Lake (CI 19140), Yellow 6 Lake (CI 15895), Iron Oxides (CI 77499).
I meant to type that Im still seeking natural temporary tatoos.
Thank you so much for your response, I apologize that I missed it. I’m still desperately seeking natural temporary stamps. I recently thought that maybe I could use an ink pad with stampers of her choice on her skin, but I cant seem to find any natural ink pads either. I would gladly make it myself but not sure if possible. Thoughts?
Natural Earth Paint has a face painting kit. Could that work? Either paint on a design or maybe you could use it with a stamp. I bought their regular paint kits for my daughter.