If your family spends a lot of time outdoors, you’re probably already aware of ticks. This summer, one mom from Ohio is raising awareness about seed ticks to help parents learn how to find them on their kids.
Seed ticks are so tiny that they’re often missed or confused for seeds, dirt, freckles or some other harmless spot. It’s easy to overlook them on kids, and they’re even harder to find on pets.
“I’m putting this out there, just a heads up for parents of kids who love to play outside,” Beka Setzer, a mom of two young girls from Ohio, wrote on Facebook along with photos of her daughter covered in seed ticks.
“Emmalee was playing outside yesterday, rolling around on the ground while enjoying the sprinkler,” Setzer said. “After coming inside and laying down for a nap I just happened to notice tiny (and I mean tiny) little black dots all over her legs, abdomen, arms, and armpit area.”
When Setzer went to remove the small black dots, she noticed what was really on her daughter’s arms and legs.
“Thinking they may have just been seeds, I tried to wipe then scrape one off and it was a tick,” Setzer said. “She must’ve been playing in or near a nest of tick larvae and was covered.”
Setzer’s daughter had only been outside for 30 minutes but was covered in more than 150 ticks. Even though she removed the little larval ticks right away, Emmalee still ended up sick.
“This morning she woke up with a low-grade fever, these spots on her and a hard, large marble sized swollen lymph node,” Setzer wrote at the time.
Emmalee’s doctor helped her recover with “an aggressive and extended course of antibiotics and antihistamines,” Setzer said.
Recently, Setzer found another tiny tick on her daughter and shared the photo online again to help other parents.
“I want to make every parent aware of what these look like so you can be on the lookout,” Setzer said. “They’re not as easy to see as the ticks you’re likely looking for on yourself or children.”
It’s crucial parents know how to remove the ticks if they find any on themselves or their kids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends following these steps when removing ticks:
- Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin’s surface as possible.
- Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick; this can cause the mouth-parts to break off and remain in the skin. If this happens, remove the mouth-parts with tweezers.
- If you are unable to remove the mouth easily with clean tweezers, leave it alone and let the skin heal.
- After removing the tick, thoroughly clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol, an iodine scrub, or soap and water.
- Dispose of a live tick by submersing it in alcohol, placing it in a sealed bag/container, wrapping it tightly in tape, or flushing it down the toilet.
- Never crush a tick with your fingers.
