My 5yo doesn't seem to have a problem with mosquito bites but the 3yo has severe reactions. This keeps him up at night scratching at the bites and crying a lot.
The obvious answer is don't let him get bitten and we do everything possible to avoid that. However, once he's bitten what can you suggest to ease his discomfort until the bites naturally recede?
If you get to the bite quickly enough, AfterBite can work miracles. After the fact, our family uses Solarcaine which includes a mild anesthetic and also cools the skin. In terms of preventing bleeding and scabbing, preventing scratching is key, so anything that reduces the itch at the beginning will help. Also, once a bite is scratched, the healing damage from the scratch will itch again tomorrow. You may also consider an antihistamine cream or a system antihistamine (eg Benedryl) at bedtime, in a child appropriate dose, both to ensure a good night's sleep tonight and to reduce tomorrow's itching and misery caused by scratching.
After some camping trips in which I got covered in bites, I discovered that even the mildest scratching slows healing. Bites I couldn't reach (between my shoulder blades) drove me insane but healed in a day or two. Bites I couldn't reach in public (say, on my stomach) healed in a week or two. Bites I could absent-mindedly scratch (on my wrist) lasted for over a month and were uncomfortable the whole time. I now put a bandaid over any bite simply to prevent myself from scratching it.
Some parents swear that patting a bug bite - reasonably firmly but not a slap - brings all the same relief of scratching but without causing damage. A toddler can be taught to pat instead of to scratch, they say, and I have seen kids who do this. We didn't try it ourselves, though.
One major advantage of a small child is suggestibility. The magical parental medical treatments in our house included "a warm cloth" to be held against a bruise or other sore spot and "a cold cloth" for fever and the like. It is amazing what these items, offered by someone who loves you and says they will help, can in fact help with. For one of my children, who swelled up visibly not only from bug bites but also from Solarcaine, I once said "tell your hand not to swell up like that." With some encouragement, the toddler faced the offending hand and delivered a stern verbal order. Within half an hour the swelling was down, and every time a bug bite started to swell, a quick order (from the owner of the hand, not me) took care of it. I can't say the same is guaranteed to work for you, but it can't hurt to try, right?
If you are in the states there are several spray on remedies which seem to work pretty well and you can find them in most drugstores. If you want something more natural my family remedy is used tea bags, fresh but cooled. You press them against the bite for 5 minutes or so. I don't know why but it seems to work.
Really though if your kid is a skeeter magnet (been there when I was young) tea bags just won't do, get the spray or he'll be head to toe in tea bags. Or just let him get bitten a lot, I got bit so much I developed an immunity to it, although it was pretty unpleasant for awhile!
Where I live we have two seasons, Winter and Mosquito, so based on decades of experience the best thing is to avoid getting bitten (ounce of prevention = pound of cure) so try:
Understanding that you can't avoid mosquitoes 100% of the time, if bitten you can treat the bite with:
To be honest the best long-term solution for me was to get so badly bitten by mosquitoes one summer that I developed an immunity. They still annoy me when they fly into my nose/ears/eyes but I don't react to the bites themselves.
IME the susceptibility to mosquito bites is different from child to child and is greater in smaller children.
Tell your child that it's best to ignore those bites. (It can't right now, but it's still the right thing to teach.)
Wait. (It will get better the oder he becomes.)
Yes, you can apply a lot of pastes and other stuff, but IMO this just makes the issue bigger.
My child had some rashes where mosquitoes bit him - and his pediatrician told us to not use repellant all the time, so we had to mosquito-proof his bedroom. I made fine mesh panels with neodymium magnets along the wooden rim (the window frame was made of iron, so the magnets had a strong grip, and were easy to remove.
I also bought two of those electrical mosquito tennis rackets (they break easy), and would hunt down the eventual mosquito that entered the bedroom from another room every night (it is rather empowering to be able to hunt those suckers, instead of being just a huge milkshake).
One thing I learned, the bugs like to hide between the clothes in the wardrobe / closet. A quick beating on the hanging clothes and they go flying, then its zapping time.
We use these citronella bracelets and (for us at least) they work great. As long as they don't get too wet you can even take them off, stow them in a plastic bag, and use them again for a day or two (our rule of thumb is when you stop smelling the citronella, replace it.)
Once our 3 year old gets bitten (he reacts pretty badly, too), we make a big deal about "removing the itch" with cold water and bandaids. For the kids, it's more about the emotional aspects and receiving proper attention to their injuries. We also have some made-up songs we sing about not scratching, it seems to work in that I hear him singing it to himself when he's got a big old bite on his elbow or whatever.
