With the myth dispelled that being cold will make you more vulnerable to catching a cold I wondered:
Besides personal comfort, is there any other reason to try to keep warm (besides the extreme cold causing hypothermia and frostbite).
For example, it’s a chilly fall day and the kids are playing outside. They feel fine and prefer to run around in a t-shirt. Mom yells out the back door “Put your jacket and hat back on!”
Is this old-school thinking now? If they feel fine and are at no risk of getting sick, is it okay to let them under-dress for the temperature?
For what it’s worth, I know that Lore of Running graphs performances to argue that ~54F is the ideal balance between dissipating body heat and suffering hypothermia–so if kids are out playing aggressively in the autumn in 60s and 50s, I’d think their body temperature could well be normal…
My take is usually, “If you don’t feel cold, then you’re not cold.”
But on a day like that it helps to dress in layers so that when you stop running around you can put something back on. Smaller people (i.e., children) are more subject to heat loss because of the high surface area/volume ratio, so they would cool off quickly once they stop moving. So make sure they have a coat but let them decide when they need to wear it.
Caveat: Despite the above, some kids don’t notice they’re cold when they really are; I have pulled my kids out of the pool with blue lips more than once. But being in the water is a lot different than playing football.
When my knees were still functional and I ran for exercise, I would start out with a T-shirt and sweatshirt and have them both off before I was done, in cold weather (below 40[sup]o[/sup]F) with no discomfort during or after.