Autism and mosquito bites

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Is there a chance that the itchiness of a mosquito bite is heightened in an autistic child?
Does anyone else have this problem?

I have a friend who has a baby who can successfully distract her baby from the bite. My kids (both of them), however, scratch them until they bleed. I feel so badly.
My kids have limited verbal skills, hence why I mention the baby. One of my kids has a generally heightened tactile response, but my other kid seems to not feel "hurt" and they're both the same with bites.

I do spray them with Off! (yep, chemicals and all!!) and I do have them in long sleeves and pants if they're going in mosquito territory. I have the pink lotion stuff and after bite cream but they tend to scratch anyway... Any suggestions?

Would it help to put a Band-Aid over the bite, or would they just itch them off?

It can be so hard to recognize how one feels that sometimes the itch of a mosquito bite can be overpowering IMO. While other things you'd want them to let you know, they don't register.

My daughter reacted pretty negatively to bites, big swelling etc. we gave her antihistamine for that and it really made a difference, sometimes just one or two doses when it first started.

I can't tolerate the smell or feel of mosquito repellent, so I get bitten more. But I don't think the itching bothers me more.

It might not be that it actually itches more for your kids, but just that they're harder to distract. ASC kids seem to fall into two groups - the kids who have ASC+ADHD and are really distractable, and the kids with ASC whose attention issues are the complete opposite of ADHD (constant hyperfocusing). If your kid's in the second group, it's going to be pretty hard to distract him from anything he's focusing on, good or bad.

Also, I'm guessing your friend uses social stimuli to distract her baby. Social stimuli tend to be a lot more salient to NT kids than to autistic kids.

rub mint leafs on your skin it repels mosquitos from biting
you can also put mint mouth wash in a spray bottle and spray yourself

Don't have much time to respond here but quickly...

YippySkippy- no they would just take the bandaid off

Ettina- that's true about hyper focusing. My kids are really quite different though so it's just weird that they both have this same problem.

Yes, when I'm bit by a mosquito the itch often doesn't stop until I've scratched off a layer of skin. I think the reaction varies between species though, we've had the biggest problem with the black and white striped Asian Tiger Mosquitos, the smaller brown native species aren't as big a deal. When my son was a toddler he would get an alarming amount of swelling from mosquito bites that would last for days, It doesn't seem to be as bad now that he's a little older. Now we use bug repellant and give him antihistamine when he gets a bite and use topical anti-itch creams.

When I was 11, and going to YMCA camp, I once counted 244 mosquito bites on my body.

No wonder why I couldn't sleep!

I tend to scratch really hard, until a scab forms.

I seem to be very allergic and welt instantly from bites. When I was a kid I would frequently scratch till I bled. My daughter otoh doesn't seem to be allergic at all... she doesn't even seem to get a welt. So probably a combo of ASD sensitivity and level of allergic reaction to the bite.

It never occurred to me that reactions to mosquito bites can vary, that there were different levels of allergic reactions.

That said, S1 has some many scabs on his legs from scratching bites incessantly, he looks like he's been bitten by rats or something.

I don't know about sensitivities, but I do have an allergic reaction to mosquito bites, they turn into large itchy welts. The best way for me is to prevent them. To do this, I don't eat/drink anything with sugar in it before and while I'm outside, (especially not fruit juice) i take daily antihistamines and use spray/citronella oil on my pulse areas and avoid being close to vegetation.
For the bites I focus on killing the itch before healing the bites, I use Germolene, because of its numbing local anaesthetic properties and it's an antiseptic. Its pink too. Calamine lotion works well immediately after the bite but needs regular application to sooth the itch, and can aggravate/tickle the itch while it dries. I've also used antihistamine and cortisone cremes and recommend both depending on age.
Applying a cool pack to the bite for a minute before you put creme on it also helps, especially if the drying creme causes a tickle sensation, and wearing satin/light slippy material for pyjamas at night means that if you 'sleep scratch' your nails won't get proper traction over the bite. That's all I can think of .

If it's just a small area, ice helps.

The itch drove me nuts as a kid. I had scabby scratched raw places from mid spring until late fall. I didnt know it wasnt normal. I scratched, and scratched, and scratched. And lived, obviously.

Living with the ticks from Hell, I discovered Chiggerex. Its a topical benzocaine cream. It works, at least on me, where hydrocortisone and calamine do not.

My hubby taught me a trick of putting salt on the bite, then soaking a cotton ball in isopropyl alcohol and holding it over the spot for a few minutes. It works, I guess by drawing out the irritating chemical, but it would be difficult with a noncompliant child and very time consuming with more than a few bites.

When I am losing the battle with fleas, I take very hot baths withbaking soda. The baking soda soothes the skin an dthe hot (very hot, as hot as can be tolerated) water draws out histamine. After 20 minutes or so, I am all out of histamine and cannot itch until I make more, which seems to take a few hours.

Do the kids like garlic??? Eating a lot of it seems to keep them off me. Rose geranium oil (40 drops to an ounce of baby oil) also helped. I started doing it for the ticks and found that it stuck better than OFF, didnt bother my skin as much, and worked on skeeters too. It STINKS STINKS STINKS though, to the point that it would be hard for someone with olfactory sensitivities.

An antihistamine can also be very helpful, like Benadryl.