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Rebecca Teti is married to Dennis and has four children (3 boys, 1 girl) who -- like yours no doubt -- are pious and kind, gorgeous, and can spin flax into gold. A Washington, DC, native, she converted to Catholicism while an undergrad at the U. Dallas, where she double-majored in …
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Hallie Lord
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by Kate Wicker in Health on Wednesday, June 09, 2010 6:00 AM
Ah, summer! The sun’s out. The weather’s warm. And the kids are outside, living it up.
Spending time outdoors is a great way to keep kids active and content during the dog days of summer, but it can be a jungle out there.
Who says school’s out for the summer? This Summer First Aid Primer offers a crash course on preventing and treating common summertime afflictions.
Creepy Crawlies
From those fire ants to mosquitoes, there are a lot of awful biting critters out there, waiting to make your child their next meal.
“Do use bug repellant, but use it sparingly,” advises Vivian Lennon, M.D., medical director of primary care for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, who admits that despite her best efforts, her 3-year-old loves to play with fire ants. The best insect repellant contains DEET, but Lennon recommends a concentration not stronger than 10 percent for children and to follow the instructions on how often to apply.
If the weather permits, long sleeves and long pants – even tucked into socks – are a good precaution against bug bites as well as ticks when hiking. Lennon also recommends spraying bug repellant on clothing as opposed to skin.
Even with bug spray chances are, your kids are going to have a few bug-induced welts to contend with. Luckily, most bug bites, while annoying, aren’t serious.
Uncomfortable itching and swelling can be treated with over-the-counter medications such as Benadryl, but use oral rather than topical medication. “Oral Benadryl is a systemic medication, meaning it’s going to get in your system and will help with the swelling and itching in most cases. Topical Benadryl is virtually a waste of money,” says James Wilde, M.D., a pediatric emergency room physician at the Medical College of Georgia Health System. Applying ice can also reduce symptoms.
Swimmer’s Ear
Your child has been making a splash in the pool all summer long. Suddenly, he screams in pain when you gently tug or even touch his ear. Diagnosis? He’s probably got a bad case of swimmer’s ear.
Swimmer’s ear is caused when water washes away earwax and the normal bacteria that inhabit ears, changing the pH levels. “This allows for growth of another type of bacteria that causes most cases of swimmer’s ear,” Dr. Wilde says.
When it comes to this painful ailment, prevention is key. There are drops that help prevent swimmer’s ear. Earplugs can also help keep the water out. Oh, and encourage kids to do that silly-looking dance where they hop on one foot and shake their heads to one side to dislodge trapped water from their ears.
Over-the-counter ear drops treat swimmer’s ear by restoring the proper pH levels and kill the bacteria, but if the pain persists for more than 24 hours, see a doctor.
Poison Ivy, Sumac and Oak, Oh My!
Your child loves romping through the woods. It’s no surprise she comes home one day with red, itchy bumps on her skin. Rashes from poison ivy, oak or sumac are all caused by a substance in their sap called urushiol. Although poisonous plant rashes can’t be spread from person to person, it’s possible to get the rash from handling clothing, balls, pets and other things that have come into contact with urushiol.
If you suspect your child has handled a poisonous plant, wash the area with soap and water to remove the urushiol. This keeps the poison ivy, sumac or oak from spreading. But don’t just plunge your child into a bath. Taking a bath can spread the rash to other areas of the body since the urushiol floats on top of water. Hydrocortisone creams and an antihistamine can help relieve the itching. If the rash worsens and continues to spread, see your pediatrician.
Heat Illness
The summertime heat and high levels of humidity put children at risk for heat-related illness. There are two main types of heat-related illness – heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Symptoms for heat exhaustion include dizziness, weakness, cramps, nausea and headache. If you recognize any of these symptoms in a child, first try to cool him off. To chill him out fast, place ice packs on his neck, groin area and underarm. Also give him fluids (water is best) to drink.
Heatstroke is a more serious condition, resulting from excessive exposure to heat. It can result in unconsciousness or paralysis and demands immediate medical attention. Signs of heatstroke include confusion, dizziness and the inability to sweat. In severe cases, CPR may be necessary.
To prevent heat-related illness, keep children from playing outside for long hours during the hottest times of the day, from noon until about 6 p.m. Kids should wear cool, lightweight clothing and should load up on water – even if they insist they’re not thirsty.
—Kate Wicker and her family enjoy summertime safely at home in Georgia. Find her online at KateWicker.com.
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Great tips! I definitely didn’t know the chemical from poison ivy etc floated! Eek! I wonder if a shower would be effective for getting it all off without spreading it, even for a kid little enough they normally take baths?Or would that spread it too?
Maman A Droit, I’m no doctor, but a shower should be safe and is actually recommended to wash off the urushiol. Likewise, once you’ve rinsed your child’s body of the substance, baths are fine and can be soothing to the itchy skin. It’s my understanding that a bath right after exposure is what’s cautioned against since the urushiol is still fresh on the body (and possibly clothes, etc.). Hope this helps!
My mom used to make a swimmers ear remedy from 1 part white vinegar and 1 part rubbing alcohol and drop it into our ears, it worked well, and I think it came from our pediatrician.
Thanks for bringing up this timely subject but I will have to pass on the suggestions. DEET, Oral Benadryl and Cortisone? Perhaps investigating some healthier alternatives for young bodies would be in order as many moms are looking to go a more natural and less toxic and damaging route.
Elle, great point! I take full responsibility for my oversight, and I would love to hear about any natural remedies for some of these ailments. Any suggestions from moms out there?
Despite being a sort of “crunchy” mom, I do admit to using bug sprays with 10 percent DEET upon the recommendation of my doctor-husband. He grew up enduring big welts from hungry bugs because his mom only used natural remedies and refused to use DEET. (We tease his wonderful mom for also feeding her kids only carob chips instead of chocolate because it’s now been shown that chocolate has more health benefits than the “natural” stuff. Love you, Nana!).
I’m all for natural solutions - providing they are actually more healthy and effective. Personally, we just haven’t found any effective, natural bug repellents and have decided based on the research that the risk of insect-transmitted diseases outweighs the negligible risk of DEET in low concentrations. My husband researched DEET thoroughly before making the decision to use bug spray on our kiddos, and our past neighbor’s wife contracted encephalitis from a mosquito that resulted in severe brain damage, so we’re perhaps a bit super vigilant about this sort of thing. All this said, if anyone has found a natural alternative to DEET that actually keeps the bugs away, please do share. Both my kids and me tend to really swell up from bug bites. 
Blessings!
I meant “my kids and I both tend to swell up.” Ugh.
This is just in from Amy Welborn for treatment of insect bites: “I am a huge believer in AfterBite, which is essentially a tube of ammonia, I believe. My son reacts badly to mosquito bites, and I’ve discovered that applying AfterBite as soon as possible afterwards is of enormous help. As in - there is minimal swelling or itching.”
My oldest gets big welts from certain mosquito bites. She’s gotten cellulitis when bitten on her face, and we’ve had to endure ER and doctor visits to ensure that it stopped growing. Of course many of these bites happen when least expected, after Mass for instance, when I wouldn’t even think of putting bug spray on her! I’ve found that Zyrtec is much more effective than Benedryl in helping to minimize the reaction, but now with the McNeil recall I’m concerned about using that.
I hope some “crunchies” chime in! Some of my more “natural” friends are really into essential oils right now. Sunscreen is another topic of interest, since we swim almost every day during this time of year. I was recently reading that many of them have amounts of Vitamin A that could actually speed the development of skin cancer. This list seems to be the most widely spread at the moment:
http://www.ewg.org/2010sunscreen/
Thanks for your article, Kate!
Our yard is about 30’ x 30’, and has always been full of mosquitoes. My dear husband could never stand to come out and play w/me and the kids, because he seems to be prime rib for the little suckers. *Until* last summer….drumroll….we bought 4 Thermacell units, one for each corner, and were able to enjoy our yard as much as we wanted!
Check it out at mosquitorepellant.com. Here’s what their site says:
“ThermaCELL uses revolutionary, patented technology to dispense a small amount of repellent into the air over a long period of time. ThermaCELL is powered by a butane cartridge which provides the cordless, portable heat necessary to operate the device (batteries are not needed). It directs the heat to a metal grill. A mat saturated with Allethrin, a copy of a naturally occurring insecticide found in chrysanthemum flowers, is placed on top of the metal grill. The heat generated by the butane cartridge vaporizes the repellent allowing it to rise into the air, creating a 15 x 15 ft (225 sq ft) “Mosquito-Free-Zone” in minutes. The repellent is very unpleasant to mosquitoes, but when used as directed, will not harm humans or pets.”
We just stocked up on pads & cartridges for this summer at Home Depot!
Blair, I got that email about sunscreens & Vitamin A. While I tend to be skeptical by nature, I have to say that anything put out by the Environmental Working Group would raise red flags for me, as the info I’ve dug up seems to indicate that they are an idealogically driven activist group. I gotta wait for more even-keeled studies before I get too worked up about their claims.
I had been trying to come up with some H2 by Shaklee (as described here at Kitchen Stewardship) - it’s actually a soap, so I was thinking that’d be good. From asking around to find someone who sells it, I talked to a friend who uses a “recipe” she got a while back from Mother Earth News, I think. It was 2 cups of lemon ammonia, one cup of lemon dawn dish soap, and water to equal a gallon. They put it in a pump sprayer and spray their campsite when they go camping and have no problems with mosquites at all. I’m thinking of trying that for our garden!
Shaklee’s Basic H2 is the only thing my family uses. Last year when we were on vacation with my husbands family they all laughed at us but at the end of the weekend we were the only ones without any bites!!! Its all natural so you don’t have to worry about it being toxic for the kids.
Be careful if you are using ammonia around children, it can be quite dangerous.
Let me know if you want info about Shaklee, I am a Distributor and would love to talk to you about it.
There is a clear gel made by the Calamine lotion people called Caladryl Clear. It is amazing at taking the itch out of mosquito bites. I try to avoid insect sprays, but those Off Coils that you can burn work wonders on a patio!
I swear by garlic oil for ear problems. At our house, we put hydrogen peroxide in, leave for about a minute, drain, then apply the garlic oil as an eardrop.
Remember that the ear canal points forward, so in order to get water out, tip the head BACK and to the side, not just to the side.
Wet tea bags will also help with insect stings, especially if cold. Especially good for bee and wasp stings.
More itching/poison ivy: baking soda or oatmeal paste (with water), or in a pinch, you can use a watermelon rind until you can get home!
One more thing - NEVER NEVER NEVER try to cool down a child by bathing or wiping with alcohol. Alcohol evaporates very quickly, giving the illusion of cooling but doesn’t actually cool, and it can absorb through the skin and make things worse. Likewise, don’t try to treat a heat illness by applying large amounts of ice. Use cool water baths and drink plenty of cool drinks.
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