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Treating clothing with permethrin is supposed to be very effective. It’s probably not practical to treat every stitch of clothing they have, but maybe you can treat their shoes, jackets, and a few designated “outdoors outfits”? Also, maybe get your girls used to wearing a hat (treated) to help protect their scalps. We’re going to be spending some time in the northeast this summer and I plan to treat all the clothes we’re bringing (except undies). Do you have a tick key to help remove them if someone gets another?

We live in a very rural area and spend most of our summer working and playing outside in the woods or yard. We try to keep the grass short, even outside of the yard, on our walking paths in the woods. We spray bug spray around our ankles. We take baths/showers every night, mostly to strip naked and look for ticks. We wear jeans when playing in these areas, rather than dresses or shorts.

We're going to be camping in the woods a lot this year, so I'm going to step up my game. I once found one on my scalp. I managed to get it off but it took a huge chunk of dried skin with it my mom actually was diagnosed with Lyme disease...not fun!

@Foodnerd81: https://www.rei.com/product/152051/tick-key-company-the-tick-key They actually sell a 3-pack, too, so you can keep them on your keychain and always have one handy. Last time we were in the NE for an extended time, I did a lot of reading about ticks, just in case, and everybody recommended either one of these or special tick removal tweezers to remove them as carefully and efficiently as possible.

I used skin so soft instead of bug spray growing up (allergic to DEET), but I still got ticks every now and then.

For dog ticks, deer ticks, it the ones with the white dot on them (that's the kinds we had where I grew up but listing for size reference really), a tick key or tick pry bar worked great for removal if they were dug in too far for my mom to get it easily. For seed ticks (don't know if you have those) a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol will wipe 99% of them off.

I imagine the alcohol truck might work on a bigger tick, if you held it over the tick for a minute to make it release. We never tried it though because they were big enough to get ahold of.

My mom did tick checks every night before we got into the bath or shower until we were old enough to reliably check ourselves. She checked our hair for us even when we were older if we thought we felt something.

ETA: always check clothing lines ie: underwear line, pants waistband, sock line... That's where they always seemed to be.

@Foodnerd81: I'm not sure if it's a type or a regional name, but they're tiny tiny, smaller than a mustard seed. I never picked them up in the woods as much as running through tall pasture or not recently mowed fields.

Uggh I feel you! I am in the NE too and they are super prevalent and we're also getting reports that ticks are def out and about now. I hadn't been too worried about our yard, but was thinking about getting it professionally treated this summer for mosquitoes mainly but maybe now add ticks too... I don't have any advice that wasn't already given! I'm hyper-ware b/c my good friend suffers from Lyme and I've seen her go through hell for years to figure it all out.

ugh, i hate ticks.... My kids go (or went) to a nature-based preschool, and they do tick check after coming in, wear hats, tuck their pants and spray with an all natural insect repellant. I spray their shoes/hats at home with DEET (my Pediatrician recommended this being sprayed on clothing/hats/shoes away from the kids), and i pre-spray their skin with the all natural stuff before sending them when wearing t-shirts.

@kiddosc: I'm not actually sure... I was talking to him about the natural sprays which are not super effective unfortunately. The doctor's opinion was the DEET on clothing outweighs the risk of tick-borne illness... I send my son for 3 hours to his preschool and they are outside for an hour, and the doctor thought that would be good, but not 100% sure.

We live in the same general area as you and we also live with woods in our back yard. We treat our yard against ticks and I do not let the dog or the kids in the woods. We’ve found too many random ticks on the dog and my parents’ dog and even DH. I am really phobic about bugs.

We are in the northeast and go hiking/camping as a family. I send my kids to nature camp for three weeks each summer. Last year, I started to grow increasingly worried about tick prevention as well.

I started purchasing clothes from InsectShield, which offers clothing prereated with permethrin:
https://www.insectshield.com/

I find the socks to be really helpful bc they are relatively inexpensive. If you wear the socks over your pants, the ticks in tall grasses won't be able to climb up and latch.

They also have a service where you can send your clothing to them and have it treated with permethrin. It's a bit expensive but I was able to get a few outfits treated for both kids for about $80. They say the treatment will last through 70 washes.

I find this to be the best balance of reasonable trick prevention without having to cover them in DEET everyday. And of course, nightly tick checks.

Good luck! It's such a pain!