How to Keep Your Children Bug-Free

How to Keep Your Children Bug-Free

Any reasonably worried mom wants to keep pests away. You want to protect the inside and outside against pests that endanger children. But, you also want to keep the house, furniture, and belongings pesticide-free. Whether it’s creepy crawlers or vermin, you need to control the environment. Here’s how to keep your children bug-free.

You do not have to worry about most common household insects. Most don’t bite or sting. But, they can still worry you. You certainly do want to keep aggressive and biting bugs away because some bites and stings cause problems.

WebMD Medical Reference lists symptoms and reactions you want to avoid, especially in children.

• Anaphylaxis is a severe life-threatening allergic reaction that includes difficulty breathing, nausea and cramps, inflammation of tongue or eyelids, and irritating hives.
• Toxic reactions to bites and stings vary from mild skin irritation to serious allergic symptoms. Brown recluse spiders, black widows, and scorpions can hospitalize victims. Except for those with serious allergies, wasps, bees, and hornets sting painfully but rarely lead to more than swelling and redness.
• Mosquitos spread serious viral infections like West Nile virus and Sika virus, drawing blood from infected persons and transmitting that to another victim.
• Mosquitoes also transmit parasitic conditions like malaria to cripple and kill residents in and visitors to environments conducive to the plagues of mosquitoes.

The Seattle Children’s Hospital warns that insect bites can lead to some serious problems:

• Impetigo: a local skin irritation spreads through scratching and picking at sores.
• Cellulitis: a painful red area spreads into the skin and out from the site of the bite.
• Lymphangitis: infection spreads through the lymph channels and into the blood system as sepsis.

Children play in dirt, grass, mud, and sand where insects and critters thrive. Bites and skin irritation are inevitable. Most can be treated with home and homeopathic remedies.  Mild soap and water washing, cool compresses, hydrocortisone or lidocaine lotions, colloidal oatmeal or baking soda – these all sooth and cool the fire of insect bites.  

They are also at risk of disease spread by vermin bites and feces. You don’t have to live in rat-infested quarters to suffer from allergies spread by mice and squirrels. In any case, if there are ways to keep the family and environment safe, it makes sense to do what you can to keep your children bug-free.

What to do?

You can lay poisons and traps. And, you can go to great lengths to destroy habitats. But, if you want to protect your family from the pesticides as well as the pests, you want to opt for an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system.

The University of California – Agriculture and Natural Resources defines IPM as “an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties.” An IPM will resort to pesticides only when necessary. All processes and materials reduce risk to people, plants, and property.

Secure an IPM provider

So, if you are looking for experts to rid your house or property from pests and make a checklist for your IPM provider:

1. Regular and reliable inspections
2. Record sightings
3. Professional and responsive technicians
4. Reports on inspection results and resources applied
5. Commitment to minimize use of pesticides
6. Pesticides limited to registered bait
7. Available Material Safety Data Sheets on all materials

Of course, there are other nightmare scenarios like termites, roaches, and bedbugs, all of which call for special focus. But, if you let your children play, they will always be at risk from common and regional insects, so a plan with regular non-toxic preventive treatments can help you do all that you can to keep your children bug-free.