To think they should bring back nit nurses?

[Rachtoteach]

First day back after half term yesterday. A nice, lice free half-term I should add. Doing my little girl's hair for school this morn, she is caked in nits and eggs. I couldn't send her into school - how could I when it would then have just spread and I would have been as bad as the mums I moan about who dont appear to give a toss. I had to take my son in anyway so went into talk to my daughter's teacher. I expressed my upset that it has now come to the point (headlice has been going on and on and on since Sept) that I have felt the need to keep her off school. I know its not the teachers fault. She said unfortunately some parents simply dont treat/check and until whole class is treated at same time, problem will continue. So for WITW I have bought yet another treatment which has to be applied over night and washed off in the morning. I have my daughter at home (she is 5) and I am supposed to be at work. I really think they should bring back nit nurses so all children are checked and treated!!

I have been using a Nitty Gritty on all three of us, every 3 days since November Didn't realise you could get them on prescription until too late

They are beating me and I now want to try an insecticide. (Have also tried and failed with the oil type)

ooh how funny, was just discussing this with the tesco delivery man earlier, hadn't seen this thread. He brought up the subject, have no idea why!!! The nitty gritty comb works but yes does take time and effort, worth it though. I quickly check my dd's long hair everyday, even pulling the one odd egg out you may find on your daily check can stop an infestation. Incidentally the tesco man said the nit nurse should definitely return and I agree!

Evolution will happen. It doesn't matter whether Hedrin is a chemical or not. Some will be more likely to survive, because of some tiny difference in their dna, maybe to do with breathing, or their shape or something. So they are more likely to reproduce. In an environment that is regularly exposed to Hedrin, such lice will have a reproductive advantage. So more of the next generation are likely to inherit this subtle difference. So those lice come to rule the world of Hedrin intervention. Same applies whatever the so-called evolutionary pressure.

I think that's how it works. I have read Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, and stuff by others about evolution, I have not been trained in evolutionary biology but have a good old-fashioned 1960's education, and a personal penchant for science.

You may only have a day off work for the treatment, but then what about 3 weeks later when they catch them from another child and you have to leave work early again - or if you work a later shift, end up missing work - to pick them up from school AGAIN. And maybe again a month later.... all those times off can add up. I just don't think taking children out of school is the answer - it certainly doesn't work that well in the states - it's still a problem.

So what exactly does the nit nurse do? Remember that unless a child has quite a few lice they can be very hard to see. Does she comb every child in the school? (420 in our school!). A proper 40 minute comb? What if a child doesn't want to be combed and screams blue murder. Does she hold him down and do it? My ds hated to be combed when he was little- he would have been very upset if a stranger did it. Or does she just have a quick check? If she does that, she's bound to miss a few- which defeats the whole object. Does she look round and focus on the children who are scratching? Not all children with nits itch. And certainly not children who only have one or two.

How does it work?

DD has not had them as yet. She is in Grade Six of prep school. My MIL recommended neem oil if she ever does get them. Stuff smells absolutely revolting but it is a natural insecticide. If anyone tries it, let me know how it went.

Even at 5 minutes a child it would take 6 school days working non stop to check every child in our school. Or are you suggesting she "targets" children to send home? Perhaps issue "my mum's a mumsnetter" cards to fast track some through the process?

Derbac used to really cheap - crap that they are cashing in on it now. If the treatments were cheap I am sure it would help!

I can understand people's frustration, even anger. All the nit nurse used to do was check the pupils hair for evidence of nits each term or if the school had a lot of reported problems or teacher saw kids scratching constantly. They never got rid of them or removed the lice or nits. The pesticide lotions they gave are now ineffective and many linked to causing cancer...you wouldn't want that. Every parent needs to look weekly if no visual evidence, every two to three days if there has been any found or known to be in friends hair or class. Shampoo, rinse, put in conditioner, comb through until free of knots...then use a nit comb from scalp to end remove contents off comb onto white paper, every sweep and look at it for evidence. Repeat every 2-3 days in any found. Tying back long hair into plaits helps too. Ask your child to tell you if they get tickles or itches on their scalp and look for them scratching...those are lice not nits which are the eggs. Nits are cemented onto hair and don't comb out easily...plastic nit combs where teeth are separated or out of alignment are useless. Remember it is your responsibility, no one else's, and is not a reason to keep children away from school. It is not an illness. It does take time and effort. Good luck.

Ah memories! It does pass when they get to High School. I took mine out of school aged 7 and 9 and home educated for four and a half years and guess what - no head lice! (They did loads of sports and activities but only with children whose parents bothered about them so end of). Teachers complain of parents who simply use the school as a free baby-sitting service and these people are never going to be bothered to comb. Plus some children can be infested and don't seem to be in any discomfort.
I did find it sort of satisfying to some primate-like instinct though and didn't find it too terrible - we would chat about things. My two were shocked to hear from their cousins how my sister would systematically squish the wee creatures with the end of the comb though! (She was always a bit weird...) We put them in the bin and had discussions about how we treated animals and what it said about us and compared mice, rabbits and rats/bubonic plague... Quite educational really.

I always squish them, they are going to die anyway , why is it kinder if they starve in the bin?

shezzle The tesco man is clearly a mumsnetter and stalking you!

Hopeforthebest because my children are very unlikely to have infectious illnesses regularly; they are far more likely to have lice because it only takes one missed louse to then lay eggs, hatch and then reinfest many children.

All these calls for 'bring back the nit nurse' to check/treat a child's hair just come across as wanting to devolve an aspect of parenting your child to someone else. Which is ironic given that many parents grumble about the nanny state interfering in how they raise their child.

We used to do it as a whole class over white paper with free combs,took 5 minutes.

Re nanny state.What my kids have in their lunch boxes effects nobody else.

Other kids(and mine) walking around distributing nits and catching nits continuously because it's not dealt with properly in schools effects my kids and their education(concentration and hours spent combing when we could be doing reading or something else).

It is not encouraging a nanny state by wanting it dealt with effectively.

How many in your class? And you did it yourselves? What if there was somebody who had a couple of lice and they didn't get combed out in the 5 minutes- entirely possible.

They don't necessarily stop at secondary/high school either. My niece still gets them from an unkempt girl at school and they are 15.

Back then we had huge classes(none of this under 30 stuff).We didn't treat it simply did it to identify who had then made the appropriate calls(not often).The kids loved it and got very excited if anybody found one.It was a fab system for making sure kids weren't walking round unknowingly spreading.

So you thoroughly checked the heads of more than 30 children in 5 minutes? really?

No they combed their heads over a sheet of white paper with a comb-they did it themselves.Not that difficult over white paper you should try it.Even the smallest speck shows up.

They then used to holler if they found anything on the comb or paper.In my experience nits don't come in single figures,if they had it they'd find something.It was a very effective system for detecting.

The only time I've had nits(as an adult) I found out when one dropped onto a book I was reading.

I'm sorry. I absolutely refuse to believe that a class of 30 5 year olds could reliably check themselves for headlice in any amount of time, never mind 5 minutes! You may possibly find the ones that had loads- possibly-but bit the ones who had a few.

You don't ever get just a few.One louse lays loads of eggs.You may get catch them newly hatched but there will still be loads.When you rarely have nits in the class kids get highly competitive in order to find one.The amount of innocent specks I got called over for.

I guess in theory you could do it when a child had just had a new visitor which had only had time to lay and not hatch.

Obviously weekly paper combing would account for this.Takes less time than getting kids to change for PE believe me.

A whole lot more effective coupled with phone calls and immediate treatments than the current system.

MrsHeffley this sounds like a solution to me. Of course there isn't a shortage of manpower to do the checks - only it takes the form of supervised childpower!

Exactly and I used to give out a little reward for any found.They loved it and were very enthusiastic.I think a lot of teachers did the paper combing thing,think we used to get class packs of combs.

So how do you prove you're clear? And what do you do if the family doesn't treat?

it doesn't bother me at all, they are just little insects, it's not life or death