I think my son has a tick on him but he won't be still

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His preschool is in a very woodsy area and the ticks are out early this year. I'm not 100% sure that's what it is but it's stuck on him and every time I try to take a closer look at it he squirms and thrashes and runs away. I even tried telling him it might be a spider so he'd want me to take it off but that didn't work. He's extremely ticklish in the area where it is.

Any helpful hints? I might end up taking him to the doctor just because this is giving me the willies.

Check it when he's asleep?

Thanks! He sleeps like a rock. I've gotten him out of bed, strapped him into his car seat, driven across town to pick up my husband from work, and driven back home and put him back to bed all without him waking up.

If it is a tick, get a tick remover to extract it.

My son got a tick from beach grass last year and we were all a bit freaked out/grossed out by it, but they are so used to them out on Long Island --someone in a store suggested the extractor, a little plastic tool with a groove, and it was easy and quick. No Lyme Disease, fortunately.

If you can smear vaseline on the spot, the tick should suffocate and fall out on its own, given that your son doesn't just wipe off the vaseline.

We live in a very tick prone area... this is not new to us.

My son won't be still for me. So, when he's watching TV or just standing still, I go up to him and grab the tick and pull it out. I'm done before he can fuss. Yep, it hurts a little but this is by far the fastest and easiest for us.

I am familliar with ticks, so I know how to do it easily. most importantly, you want to pull straight out from the part that's attaching to your son. Don't pull from the end. Don't squeeze the body part. If it's mouth breaks off and stays in, it doesn't matter as that's not the infectious part.

If you look up the how to's they will say don't use your fingers...but they don't have my kid. tweezers aren't happening.

DO NOT USE ANY SUBSTANCE to kill the tick while it's embedded in skin. This can cause the tick to throw up the contents of its stomach, propelling the infectios nasties into your child.

Watch the site for a rash for 30 days. Be worried if the rash is over 2 1/2 inches.

Benadryl. Then get the tick off with nail polish and tweezers. That's what I had to do once or twice. My kids used to play in those woods over there at Avondale Park, I mean up in the woods up there and would get them quite a bit. Most of the time they were pretty good about letting us get the tick off them sometimes they just weren't. Another thing we used to do in the summer was hose them off on the back steps before they came inside. They enjoyed that and nobody could see them in the back yard anyway so I would just strip them down, hose them off and dry them right out there. The fact that they liked it made them stand still and let me dry them off, which made it easy to find ticks on them.

Also, keep a buzz cut on him in the summer if you don't already. It's so much easier not only to keep clean but to find ticks and stickers in.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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