Children pick up ticks by brushing against low vegetation, leaf litter, and ground cover in shaded parts of the yard. These are all the same areas where ticks wait at knee height or below for a host to pass.
Finding a tick on your child is scary. It doesn't matter if it's the first time or the fifth. The worry about Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses hits immediately, and it changes how you think about your own backyard.
Kids are extra vulnerable to tick encounters for simple reasons. They play low to the ground. They run through garden beds, roll in grass, build forts under bushes, and crawl along the edges of the yard that adults walk past without a second thought. These are all areas where ticks climb onto low vegetation and leaf tips with their front legs extended, waiting to make contact. This is called questing.
Ticks don't jump or fall from trees. They grab on from ground level, typically below knee height. A child running through a border of ground cover or sitting in a shaded patch of grass near a fence line is moving right through their habitat. By the time they come inside, a tick may already be looking for a place to attach, often landing in the hairline, behind ears, or along the waistband.
Ticks are everywhere in Middlesex and New London counties. The state of Connecticut has some of the highest tick-borne disease rates in the country, and 2026 is shaping up to be an especially active season.
If you’re looking for one thing you can do to reduce your kids’ odds of contracting a tick-borne illness, daily tick checks are a good place to start. Ticks usually have to be attached for 24 hours or more to transmit diseases like Lyme disease. Beyond that, we have a video on the 6 C's of tick control if you are looking for more concrete steps you can take.
If you and your family live in Middlesex or New London County and you’re tired of dealing with ticks on your own property, Mosquito Squad of Middlesex New London can help. Tick control treatments can be applied to the shaded, high-risk zones of your yard where ticks hide and kids play. A trained technician will walk your yard and figure out where ticks are hiding, then they’ll treat accordingly, reducing the tick population by up to 90%. And they’ll come back every three weeks so your treatment never lapses.
