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AIBU?

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Original poster

To think children with headlice that mothers refuse to treat should be sent home with a bottle of Hedrin

218 replies

MrsHeffley · 18/11/2011 19:55

and not allowed back until treated.

I type this as my dd 6 is shrieking and sobbing in the bathroom yet again whilst dp combs her hair.She was clear yesterday after several days combing,she came back today infested with several fully sized adults(quite clearly not recently hatched from missed eggs).

I have to treat my dd as it effects her concentration.She has waist length hair(always tied up) which she likes and wants to keep.We treat/check her hair regularly but it hurts and is expensive when we resort to Hedrin. It's affecting our home life.

There is one child in the class who continually has nits and never gets it treated.My dd likes her and wants to play with her but this evening just said she doesn't anymore after 2 years as she's fed up with us hurting her.DD watches the nits crawling on this girl in lessons.Many parents/kids know and I feel sorry for her.

I feel this PC do nothing attitude is contributing to the nits epidemic and does many children no favours. A quiet phonecall home like we had when I was little and the whole class would be nit free. Kids wouldn't need continuous painful comb outs and more importantly infested kids wouldn't have children avoiding them for fear of catching nits.

Hard hat firmly on.

OP posts:
valiumredhead · 21/11/2011 11:19

I got it from the GP after I made a HUGE fuss.

valiumredhead · 21/11/2011 11:21

What high risk Vosene thing sardine?

SardineQueen · 21/11/2011 11:23

someone linked ir upthread

this

i have emailed them

SardineQueen · 21/11/2011 11:25

"I have just been looking at your map and notice that it includes NAMES AND ADDRESSES as well as stupid stuff like "russia". Pleas remove the names and addresses as I imagine that teh children involved would perceive this as bullying and it would be very upsetting for them to have their name or house marked on your map."

EdithWeston · 21/11/2011 11:27

"What did your sister give you for your birthday?"

"Nits"

Oh dear.

valiumredhead · 21/11/2011 11:28

Oh I can't see the names and addresses but not good if they are on there!!! FFS what ARE they thinking?! Shock

Is it too cold for nits in Scotland? On that map there are none there Grin

FellatioNelson · 21/11/2011 11:30

I don't see why the school should buy the Hedrin, but I do think that if HL are found the school should have an automatic 24 or 48 hours off, to give the child a chance to get properly treated, combed and cleared, and then they should be checked by a member of staff on their first day back, and sent home again if it's obviously not been dealt with.

SardineQueen · 21/11/2011 11:30

I noticed that scotland is pretty good as well. Not so densely populated? Colder? More efficient parents? Who knows?!!!

BoffinMum · 21/11/2011 11:38

I was thinking of getting our department to develop a website whereby anonymously you would be able to enter the name of your school and the year group, and say whether your child had had an outbreak of nits/threadworms/whatever, and then schools could see if they had more of an epidemic on their hands than other schools/year groups in the area, giving parents a bit of influence over getting schools to be more proactive about parasites.

What do people think? Would you use a website like that to report problems?

megapixels · 21/11/2011 11:45

YANBU. I've spent a lot of time, money and effort on getting rid of nits, and I know exactly who keeps giving it to my kids! This particular child has live lice running on her hair when you just stare at her head for a few seconds Shock . I kept telling the mother about Hedrin and all sorts of treatments and even that you can get it free on prescription but she'd just shake her head and say nothing works (ummm, perhaps that might be because you never tried it). This was DD1's very good friend so no escaping but I finally had enough and said no more playing with her and we've been clean since.

hackmum · 21/11/2011 11:45

The school really needs to send this child home if she's coming in with headlice and infesting everyone else. I'd strongly recommend writing to the head about it if the class teacher won't do anything. If the head doesn't engage with you, write to the governors, or ask a parent governor to raise it a meeting.

In the meantime, I agree with everyone about using loads and loads of conditioner as well as using the commercial treatment. (There was some talk of bringing out a special comb that electrocuted the lice - don't know what happened to that!)

I'd also strongly suggest cutting your daughter's hair. You're just making life difficult for yourself (and for her).

belgo · 21/11/2011 11:46

FellatioNelson you do not need to miss one or two days of school just because they have head lice Shock. What about working parents? Should the grandparents (or whoever the emergency child care is) have to step in yet again just because a child has lice? And missing two whole days of education just for head lice?

Head lice can be treated overnight or in an evening. There is no way I would keep my children home for head lice.

gramercy · 21/11/2011 11:51

YANBU

I have spent vast sums on de-icing the dcs repeatedly.

Any complaints I made to the school were met with the weary response that they are not allowed to target individual pupils and a note must be sent to all.

Whoever came up with this idea must have been a major shareholder in Hedrin/Full Marks manufacturer.

DooinMeCleanin · 21/11/2011 11:59

Dd2 was sent home when she had them and then checked on return before I was allowed to leave her there .

Dd1 was dragged out of class and checked by a teacher and was allowed to rejoin her class as she was clear.

This is a state school. Dd1 was mortified and was adamant that it was not at all discrete and the whole class knew she might nits Angry. Dd2 was very upset they didn't even let her stay for lunch time Hmm

FellatioNelson · 21/11/2011 12:04

What about working parents? contigency plans must be made for when children are ill or there is a problem - and this is a problem! I know in theory they can be treated overnight, but in my experience givng them a sufficiently thorough combing takes hours, and sometimes several sessions are needed to be on the safe side. I would never just treat the head without combing out as many live crawlers and eggs as I can first, and then I would alsways comb after treatment as it seems to loosen the dead eggs and get them off more easily. I wouldn't in good faith be able to send them in until I could see nothing on them.

hackmum · 21/11/2011 12:30

gramercy: "Any complaints I made to the school were met with the weary response that they are not allowed to target individual pupils and a note must be sent to all."

Who doesn't allow them? Is it the local authority? The government? I'd love to see the written-down rule that says they're not allowed to do it. I bet it's not against the law, it's just some stupid guideline written by a faceless bureaucrat.

belgo · 21/11/2011 12:48

Contingency plans are made for ill children of course - but nits are not an illness. It will just mean inconvenience for parents like me who treat nits; and the parents who don't treat their children's nits are probably the ones who couldn't care less if their child was home or in school. From a social perspective, I would much rather these children were in school, nits or no nits.

PhylisStein · 21/11/2011 21:32

We had a term of terrible nits at my boarding school in the 80s. In the end we were given the day off school, the fire brigade provided extra water, all staff and pupils (1000 people) had to be chemically treated in bowls outside, we queued for hours, on the same day to finally break the cycle! Drastic but effective!

pingu2209 · 21/11/2011 22:43

If I KNEW that it was one particular child and I had gone to the school class teacher and then head teacher and neither was prepared to speak directly to the parent - I would speak to the parent.

It is horrible doing it but I would shame the parent into doing something.

Tell them that if they don't tread their child, all the other parents will speak to their children and specifically ask them not to play with the child with nits/lice.

It is horrible, it is nasty - probably bullying - but I would NOT put up with it.

I would even threaten with social services.

I have no shame over things like that.

Bossybritches22 · 21/11/2011 22:56

valium thewy CLAIM it treats the eggs as well as the lice but it obviously doesn't work or we'd all be OK! Grin

I had this problem when my 2 were small & did the lot but combing regularly was the only way to keep them down. I was pointed to the CHC website by my SIL who was a school nurse. I liked the fact that they had researched based evidence about the whole thing including the details of the life cycle which made it a lot clearer. (the things you have to learn as a mum!!)

By making it part of the bath routine it was a matter of course very quickly.

kipperandtiger · 21/11/2011 23:06

I thought schools had a policy that if a child came back with persistent headlice the child would be sent home?

I presume the headteacher would not want the headlice spreading through to the entire school - including staff and their families.

No parent or carer can be too busy to treat headlice - you do it at night when you're at home. So it's the responsibility of whoever lives with the child. It doesn't require taking an afternoon off work to deal with.

JessAssassin · 06/03/2012 14:22

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BoysAreLikeDogs · 06/03/2012 14:29

Reported you cheeky monkey

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Hth

headlicebuster · 27/03/2013 11:12

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HappySeven · 27/03/2013 12:08

I'm sure I read somewhere that using conditioner can reduce the effectiveness of the chemical treatments but that the combing is as effective as chemicals (more so?)

My GP always directs me to this website for all conditions www.patient.co.uk/health/Head-Lice-Medicated-Treatment.htm and it says that the advice is that you only treat those with live lice now so you don't need to treat the whole family.

My DS just had nits and we used the bug buster comb method. Very easy and non-traumatic, I'd highly recommend it. I intend to keep it up every week at hair wash time to ensure we catch them before they make themselves at home next time.