To think that kids with nits should be sent home

[JugglingNStruggling]

I don't know why kids aren't sent home if they have nits and prevented from coming back to school until their parents get rid of them
at the moment there seem to be a fair number of parents who don't seem to care if their child goes to school with nits and gives them to everybody in sight
I don't think there should be a stigma to catch nits, but there should be one if you keep coming to school and inflicting it on everybody else's kids
The school & other parents expect me to keep my kids at home if they are sick or have diarrhoea (not a notifiable disease) and I think this is quite reasonable and abide by this
The school and parents expect me not to give my kids peanut butter sandwiches in case somebody is allergic to nuts and I think this is quite reasonable and abide by this
Why can't this be extended to nits
Why do some parents seem to think that it is not unreasonable to inflict nits on everybody else

Well they are sent home from my DS's school if head lice are visible.

Grip, get one.

It is unfair of the parents but you cannot exclude a child from school because they have nits. Potentially a child could be off school for weeks if they are unfortunate enough to have parents who don't give a shit.

A hair grip?

I feel your pain!
I work at a school and I had them a few weeks back, horrid.
We aren't allowed to check children for them though, at my school it's viewed as against the pupils rights to privacy or some crap like that, so how would we know they have them?
We do have 1 child who has them so bad, you can see them on the surface of his hair and even on the collar of his shirt. Poor lad :-(

I feel your pain!
I work at a school and I had them a few weeks back, horrid.
We aren't allowed to check children for them though, at my school it's viewed as against the pupils rights to privacy or some crap like that, so how would we know they have them?
We do have 1 child who has them so bad, you can see them on the surface of his hair and even on the collar of his shirt. Poor lad :-(

If they sent kids with nits home, you'd have entire empty classes in some schools including at one time my DS's class. It's very prevalent, and it's simply a case of keeping an eye on the situation and combing, a lot.

We do have 1 child who has them so bad, you can see them on the surface of his hair and even on the collar of his shirt. Poor lad :-(

Then that child needs to be sent home.

Bringing back Nitty Nora wouldn't help nowadays Rabbittee...since the shame has been taken out of having head lice.

Back in Nora's day, it was the 'walk of shame' with the 'brown envelope' that made mortified parents treat their kids and the whole family.

Now, if Nora discovered lice on a child's head the parents would be told in private.

yanbu
we seem to be so busy thinking about the child with shit parents, we forget about the other children who are re infected by this child.
IMO if a child's parents do not deal with it after child is sent home, ss should b involved

The pupils at ds's school are sent home to treated. I assumed that was the same at all schools, they are risking a huge infestation by not doing this.

More kids are likely to have threadworms than head lice! Nice thought eh..

Lice aren't all that bad in the big scheme of things. A child missing weeks of education because their feckless parents don't delouse them is a bad thing.

Maybe schools should have some sort of opt out policy regarding treatment ie unless you specifically opt out kids with nits would be treated in school. The parents who can't be arsed delousing their kids probably wouldn't bother to opt out either.

Hmm the kids I see at school crawling with them are the sort of kids who are better off at school. I have phoned parents to take kids off for treatment and got a few choice comments from the parents. That's if you can get hold of them on their ever changing mobile numbers. They also won't pick up if they recognise the school number (141 is my friend!)

Lice aren't all that bad in the big scheme of things. A child missing weeks of education because their feckless parents don't delouse them is a bad thing

A severe infestation in a child can be a very bad thing...it can make them ill and not to mention very miserable.

They wouldn't miss weeks of education, they'd be sent home and expected straight back after treatment.

Oh yes definitely! Frontline and Bob Martins is the way to go!

There was an article in the Sunday papers saying how the head louse is becoming immune to most treatments and some live lice is going to become something that most children will have to live with until they are old enough to keep their heads well away from other children.

They are becoming more resistant to the cold, so are starting to get better at living in plaits, even.

One scientist that studies lice, says that the louse that is around today is not the same as the one that was around in our mothers day.

Some children have only been clear after being taken to specialist hairdressers that dry out the louse and vacume off any eggs, but it is an expensive treatment.

The school should be dealing with any child that has lice so bad that they can be seen from a distance or on clothing. Thay can impact on that child's health.

There's no point in treating one child if their siblings have them, but go to a different school.

except... i treated my dd with the chemicals every week for TWO WHOLE YEARS and every week she had them again.

we would put the overnight lotion on on a friday night and by the following friday morning she would be crawling again.

I got the guilts puting so many chemicals on her hair, that i boycotted it and stopped doing it until she had finished that year.

then she moved up to year three, when she left at the end of year two, i sat and did her nits three times a week, with the condidtioner and a comb, NO chemical solutions, and always leave the conditioner in. then once she was clear, i swapped to once a week, on a sunday, with a dvd on the tv, and she has not had any infestations since she left year 2. She HAS had one or two visitors, but becuase they were full blown adults and no eggs, i knew they were just visiting rather than permanent residents!

do you really think that my DD should have missed two whole years of school. I shudder to think how much i have spent in lotions, creams, sprays and nit combs!

At my dc's school we get letters informing us that there are head lice in the class. we have had it several times and treat it but I don't get overly worried about it, there's always going to be someone who has them and IMO impossible to have a class completely nit-free.

Some of the posts are a bit shocking, do we really want children to be sent home because we want parents to be 'shamed' into treating them. It is a fact that some parents just will not bother to treat them but it's not the children's fault.

Our school says you have to keep them off if they've got nits.
Out of 3 kids at school- ds1 10 yrs, ds2 7yrs-both never had them and dd had them once, but it was about 4 and they went with one treatment.

However, threadworms are awful, but I don't think my kids catch them from school because they seem to get them most when we're on holiday-they just love digging in dirt and are rubbish at washing their hands. I am sick of inspecting poo and bums, boil washing bedding and towels-it's rubbish. We've not had them for a few months now....

I don't think it is shameful at a young age to be sent home to be treated. The other day ds said matter of factly that a girl had been sent home for 1/2 hour as she had nits. Ds has had nits 3 times as have most of his class they just accept it as one of those things.

As a former teacher of a reception class I have to say that nits are the bain of school life. I can remember talking to a parent about nits in the class and saying that everyone was being advised to check. She was adamant her darling child did not have them - despite me having seen them that morning and I could see them marching around her peroxide died hair in front of my eyes yuck

What has peroxide blonde hair got to do with it?
Do nits prefer blondes?