Read the Directions

Last weekend Madison asked me to buy her some new face cleanser. Her friend was using it and she thought it would work for her (yeah, we never did this as a kid). She has had the typical pre-teen acne for a couple of years and we have varied our product usage trying to find what would work. We bought the new cleanser on Sunday and she began to use it that evening.
Flash forward to Thursday. Madison's face was horribly broken out. Her entire forehead was full of red inflamed bumps or what looked like really bad acne. It didn't surprise me because she has had these breakouts before. We have kept some prescription medication for "spot" treatments. I applied this to her problem areas.
Flash forward to Saturday. Her acne still looked horrible, but now she had some dry patches on her face. That night I started researching products and what to use for her. On Sunday, I broke down and bought a trial package of ProActive. That evening, Madison's face was "burnt" and I mean red, raw and burnt. Her skin had started peeling and flaking off, A LOT!
I washed her face with some of my gentle cleanser and whoa, burning and more redness. I caked her face with lotion, ya know the kind you pay ridiculous amounts of money for.
Monday morning I checked her face and it looked like an alligator. Nothing had changed. It didn't even look like the patches had gotten any better. If anything, there were more dry patches. I put more lotion on.
By Monday evening, it was still bad and not getting any better. I asked her to bring me the cleanser and tell me when she started using it and when she stopped. Justin and I both asked her how she was using it. FINALLY, something made sense. Ready, don't gasp - she was putting the cleanser (gel with acne fighting beads in it) on her face at night and patting it dry. She had mis-read the directions and missed the part about rinsing it off of her face. So for 5 days straight she had let this cleanser dry on her face. The "breakouts" were actually a reaction that her skin was having a "heat rash." To make matters worse, I put on the prescription medication on her face during this "heat rash."
Trip to the dermatologist today! Our dermatologist rocks! Madison basically gave herself a really strong chemical peal. Not really that good for an 11 year old. The awesome thing is that there is no permanent damage, but it will take about 4-6 weeks to heal. YEP, she did it good. She will use a prescription lotion for three days and then we switch to a new recommended cleanser (not ProActive by the way) and prescription. The doc made sure Madison understood how to do everything and explained it to her in words, in print and motions (how she should put the creams on and take them off). The whole time she talked to Madison directly, which was great. Have a mentioned I love her! She is such a fantastic doctor.
Needless to say, Madison and I both learned a lot today and she is confident she will have great skin in about a month. We go back for a check up in 5 weeks.
Moral of the story - read the directions!