Beck Vass: The day I accidentally rubbed salt in my son's wounds

My son is tough. He takes really big knocks and never makes a fuss, but on this occasion he was a mess. Photo / Getty Images

Sometimes, as a parent, you try to help your kids but you end up kicking them while they're down - metaphorically, of course.

This is no more evident than it was for us one recent Sunday.

The kids (6 and 4) had been hammering away at my husband, wanting him to take them to the local swimming pool.

But I'd decided that if we went to the much warmer hot pools over at the Mount, where our five-month-old baby could also get in, it could be an outing for the whole family.

The kids were adamant. They really didn't want to go to there.

Basically, I pulled rank, deciding that family time was precious and if they wanted to go for a swim, they could do it at the hot pools - all of us.

I promised our girl - who doesn't like these pools because she can't stand the salt water drying her skin out - that when we got home I'd use the delicious caramel Bonbon Factory body scrub I'd been given as a birthday gift, and it would make her skin feel and smell nice.

She's a bit of a sensory kid, as you can tell from the salt water issues, and nights earlier had been lured into the bathroom because she could smell this scrub. It's delicious.

She reluctantly agreed.

We got to the hot pools and I took our girl and baby in to the change rooms. We emerged and got into the warmest pool.

As my husband got into the pool with our 4-year-old son, the drama began.

Our boy started screaming the place down. This kid is tough. He takes really big knocks and never makes a fuss, but he was a mess.

I assumed he was a bit hungry and being a bit weird. I and told him we'd get something to eat after a quick swim. But nothing helped him. Then we realised what was wrong.

He'd saved up some birthday and Christmas money he'd been given and had bought a skateboard that morning. He'd spent the day doing tricks and falling over and generally being a pretty hard core skater kid. The sandpaper surface of the board had scratched up all his legs. He had scrapes all over the place.

We hadn't noticed because he hadn't complained about them at the time, but the salt water from the pool was stinging and he was letting the world know.

I tried to tell him that the sting goes away if he could just wait a bit, but he was having none of it.

We decided to bail and head home via the pizza shop and, as promised, when we got home, I put the kids in the shower.

Our boy, by now hyper-aware of his scrapes, didn't like the water hitting his legs but quickly realised it had stopped stinging.

As I tried to get the kids out, our girl reminded me about the "yummy stuff".

I grabbed it and let them have a smell. They thought it was delicious.

They were so excited as I lathered them both up but then our boy started screaming and hopping about all over again.

Uh oh.... I licked my hand.

Turns out it wasn't a sugar scrub as I had assumed. It was salt.

Sometimes a mum makes it all better, and sometimes they just rub salt in your wounds – literally.