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 had DD invite the child jumping with them we named crawlie kid for a play date after school... then text her mum saying just found a nit in DD's hair shall i treat your DD as well while i am doing it ;) she was happy with that.

invited same child again a week later (for second treatment and it seemed to have stoped the flood for the time being ;)

it just costs a bloody fortune!!! DD has THICK wavy bum length hair :( takes a good hour to do it propperly - DH said he had 'checked' her in 10 minutes, i had to re-show him how to do it propperly ;)

C'mon OP, how many eggs, lice and empty egg cases (nits) were there? 1 louse lays 7-10 eggs a day I think and they take 10-14 days to hatch.

this lasts for ages and the rinse/spray deters lice from your/your childs head.

"Sorry, but if your DD is caked in nits and eggs today, she was NOT nit free over the half term holiday! Initial stages where there are only a few is hard to notice even with careful checking (as they are laying eggs so close to the scalp)"

I think this is probably the case too, sorry.

I don't think we need nit nurses but maybe some parent education talks and training to put more pressure on all parents to look after their children and deal with this, targeted at the parents of repeat nit carriers in particular.

oh nits, my daughter eldest daughter used to get these from her untreated best friend at junior school. I got so fed up in the end I resorted to plaiting her hair into 2 high bunches then twisting each round on each other into buns and then virtually stapling them to her head with grips and she went to school like that everyday. That and combing through with conditioner, using that nit comb which has the twisted prongs on it, every time I washed her hair pretty much did the trick. She's eighteen now with lovely long, nit free hair :)

I don't think mumsnet likes me :(, my posts keep disappearing. I wrote a really long one earlier saying that you need to treat everymember of the family every 4 days for just over 2 weeks to get rid of head lice properly. After the egg hatches, the louse cannot lay any eggs for 4 days, but after that they will lay 10 eggs a day. If you kill all the live lice the eggs will still hatch and the cycle will start over. You need to kill all the hatching lice before they get to maturity. An egg takes up to 14 days to reach maturity from being laid.

And it is absolute tosh to say that you can't tell the parents that their child has nits- I have no idea where this myth came from.

this thread has made my head itch like mad

something that i think helps is putting loads of styling gel or mousse in their hair, ds has got a mohawk short spiky cut now and i always gel it in the mornings. and he hasn't had any for ages now even though there have been a few letters home asking parents to check

so i definitely think that helps in some cases.

Some super-lice are immune to the pesticides, so you have to comb anyhow. So I go straight to combing.

Tea tree is a repellant, not a treatment. I don't think you can prove how effectively it repels (and it's definitely not 100%, or we'd know for sure) but, like tying up long hair, it might be sparing you even worse.

Step one- wash/ condition hair, comb through copious amounts of conditioner until gone ( you think!)

Step two - add hedrin and let any remaining buggers be exterminated

Step three - repeat step one

Any child with plaitable hair gets hair put into one/ two French plaits ( depending on length/easiness to get all hair gathered), clips added to stray hairs, vosene repellent added if you want, then hairspray. This will be the hairstyle until they end primary!!

The little criters will find it hard to attach to hair that isn't loose

I've just ordered a bug busting kit after reading this thread

I must be the only parent whose children have never had nits .
They are aged 13 and 16 now so hopefully safe.

We need qualified nurses being paid to nurse, not to do a parent's job.

Unfortunately primary school children will get nits and lice, especially where some parents are lax about checking and combing. It's a social problem more than a medical one.

Does the malt vinegar trick work? I remember my mum used to do this to me all the time. Wasn't sure what was worse, having nits or perpetually smelling of chips...

Our local Infant school sent every single child home last half term with a nit comb and a paper copy of the instructions, inundated us with texts to make sure everyone had treated their kids.
They text to tell you if " a child in your childs class" has nits.
Think they're as cheesed off as we are.

I swear that head lice have chameleon properties!!! Dd is bright ginger.... And they ALWAYS blend in to match to try to evade me!

And on her blonde brother they go almost translucent!

Yes, they do change colour to camaflage themselves. I am so relieved to see that I'm not the only person with kids to have a problem with nits. No-one around here would ever dream of admitting that their dear darlings had ever had such a thing!

I never had nits as a kid. I'm surprised as my hair is thick, wavy and often used to get very tangled. DD1 had them once when she was 2, from another child at childminders. Fingers crossed she has never had them since, even though we have letters home about "a child in the class" having them. I do check with a nit comb but when she did have them it was very obvious!

I wonder if nits are more prevalent as people bath their kids too much?

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but just wanted to warn you

When DD(20) was 17 or 18 she picked up lice from being in the mosh pit at a gig she had gone to

Ah, fond memeories of me and brothers and sisters getting to stay off school for a whole day, and being called to the bathroom one by one to be slathered in Napalm.
Loved having nits!
I think the stuff they used to use on us is illegal now, or is that an urban myth?

There is a bark that you can make into tea that you then pour over the head and the nits literally hop off the head as they hate the stuff so much. My friend used it when she had dreadlocks and couldn't comb her hair. Can't remember the name of it but you get it in health food shops.

Well the lice do, I imagine, but what about the actual nits, the eggs?