“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
judged by the way its animals are treated.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

by Sarah Lane

Now that school’s out and we’re heading down the front steps of summer, our children will rekindle their complicated relationships with insects and arachnids, frequently picking up and trapping, occasionally screaming at and running away from, and too often stomping and squishing them. But there are many good reasons to model a different way of interacting, helping our kids observe closely, admire and appreciate, and tread lightly when in the company of our buggy friends.

Reasons

Got Empathy? If you want an empathetic kid, model empathy. Empathy is not selective. It is being able to see the life connection in all living things, not just the ones you think are cute.

There’s No Need to Defend Ourselves. Most insects are not harmful to us. If something is not harming you, then there is no reason to defend yourself against it. And for those insects that can harm you, such as mosquitoes and a small number of spiders, the best way to defend yourself is to stay away. That often means wearing long sleeves in the evening and trying not to stick your hand or head into places where they don’t belong.

Insects and Arachnids Have Important Work to Do.

1. Spiders are our friends. They catch many insects, including disease-carrying ones. An average spider will kill 2,000 insects per year. In fact, spiders are being used for pest control in some agriculture, such as organic cotton farming. David Richman, of the Department of Entomology at New Mexico State University, writes, “Spiders are numerous enough in agricultural fields (sometimes literally thousands or millions to the acre) that they serve to dampen insect numbers, often including pest species, because these are often the most common insects.” He estimates the global benefits of spiders and predatory insects at more than $100 billion per year. Most spiders—there are 50,000 species—are not poisonous or venomous to humans, and yet they get a bad rap and get blamed for bites they had nothing to do with, such as flea and bedbug bites. (Click this link to identify venomous and poisonous spiders.)
2. We need bees. They are the primary pollinators in one-third of the world’s crops. The recent colony collapse disorder affecting European honeybees has raised human awareness of the need to protect bees, especially from pesticides. They don’t want to be in our homes any more than we want them to.

The Alternative

There are many ways to handle the human need to keep bugs at arm’s length without hurting the little creatures:

1. Install window and door screens.
2. Plug up home access points.
3. Repel. Mosquitoes don’t like certain scents. Badger Balm smells good to us, but the little stingers don’t like it. Fresh mint also works.
4. Disrupt the scent trail for ants. Simply rub away the trail they’re following over about a yard’s length. Make sure to remove the source of their interest or they’ll be back.
5. If you have moths in your closet, once a year take all your clothes out and hang them in the sun for a day.
6. Remove sources of moisture in your walls that can attract termites. Without the moisture, they’re not interested.
7. Use a Bug Relocator (bug wand) to vacuum up and move trapped bees, flies, and the spiders you’d rather not have in your home to the outside. Make sure not to buy the kind that purposefully electrocute the bugs upon trapping them.

Most important, remember that you can help your kids avoid crippling phobias by modeling interest in and respect for insects and arachnids. If you’ve got some work to do in this area, it’s not too late to get started.

Whatever you do, don’t use chemical pesticides. Chemical pesticides cause widespread health problems. Many agrochemicals devastate human and animal populations, causing birth defects, cancer, brain and organ damage, and reproductive and immune disorders. They are perhaps at least partly responsible for the recent decline of bee populations.

Besides, catching and releasing bugs is fun. When using the Bug Relocator properly, kids learn gentleness and empathy. They can look at the bugs up close in the tube before releasing them.

©ProgressiveKid 2010

Image by John Douglas, November 2007, Creative Commons license.

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