headlice - is it reasonable to ask for warnings/ kids not to hug you?

[NotYoMomma]

AIBU if the parents know their kids have lice to give you a heads up before letting their little angels climb all over you/ or your kids?

dn 8 and 11 have lice a lot and I am sorry to say it makes me not want to hug them or for them to be all over dd

I think bil could give us a heads up or at least tell the girls who are old enough to not be hugging people and playing rough when they have them

AIBU?

I really dont want to cause a family issue but those poor girls have them a lot (mil usually does treatment as Mum and Dad don't and she only sees them once a week)

how do I approach it? never had it here yet (dd a baby with short hair atm but dreading it already and dont want to stop her seeing her cousins)

the reason I ask is because they were treated last week and riddled but apparently clear this week so we all had a group hug,

then bil says youngest still has them and has been scratching all day.

ashamed to say I almost recoiled in horror

Poor kids

Yeah, they should be made ring a bell and shout "unclean". Not.

Yanbu. If there's a lice warning at school then I don't want the dc's over me until I've checked their hair. I live in fear of getting nits as I can't get the nitty gritty through my hair (we've had dummy runs).

dont be so ott I am not suggesting that they ring a bell and shout unclean but for gods sake I do not want to have to continually deal with infestations as dd gets older.

at their ages surely you can say to a child 'remember that these are easily spread so don't get to close to people's hair' etc

I DO feel sorry for the kids and it is shocking how many times they get them but a quick 'they have them again' from bil would potentially save passing them round the whole family.

mil has had them and tbh I dont ever want them!

Yanbu. The same thing has happened to us twice. It's bloody inconsiderate.

Why wouldn't you take the minimum precautions and tie the hair back and give people a heads-up? I hate the idea that headlice are normal and you should expect people to share their little critters as 'it's one of those things'. No it's not. Passing them on can be avoided.

Me and DS caught them both times this happened. I told everyone I'd be likely having close contact with and started treating straight away. I don't get how people can be so inconsiderate, fair enough if you don't know your child has them, but it's another thing entirely to know and say nothing.

Same problem here with bil's children.

My DC has had them since a toddler because of them and not long ago I saw one crawling, managed to grab it because I thought it was a fruit fly and they still didn't treat their hair!! They are teenagers as well which I find odd!

Not constantly! We treat with the Nitty Gritty.

I inform my neighbours (who dd plays with a lot) if dd has lice.

I also inform my best friend who's teenage daughter has long hair.

They then take the onus to tie their own hair back before visiting, move their hair to the side when sitting on yhe sofa etc.

I don't inform everyone I meet - and I never inform xps new girlfriend who has shared a hairbrush with dd (I am semi joking here).

thats just it, if I knew I could take precautions and plait my hair (and dds when it is long enough) and use the vosene anti lice stuff

we see them once a week/ twice a week so I thought they might think to be a bit more considerate

I wouldnt tell randoms either but we are certainly not randoms and I wouldnt expect my kids to be hugging/ playing with random people

Not unreasonable at all, I was so close to gel-ing DD's hair to her head for nursery yesterday.

I don't find it shocking how many times they get them

Thanks to someone not treating their little darling in DD1's year we have been fighting against headlice for the last 3 years. According to he school they get years like this.

I tie both my girls hair up, nit comb 3 times a week regardless and treat as soon as i see them.

But you are yanbu to expect a bit of warning. If my two have been treated for lice i always warn my friends.

YANBU.

Headlice is not a nice thing to have, and when someone is deliberately allowing you to put yourself and your children at risk by allowing them to hug you then they are being very unfair, rude and selfish.

I can see both sides of this. The last thing I would want to do is make a child feel singled out for something they have no control over. OTOH neither do I want to have to spend hours treating my own DC.

To some extent, headlice are inevitable. They don't distinguish between "naice" and "chavvy" children. If you get your child through to age 11 without catching them at least once, you are indeed a rarity. However, no child should have a long-term or permanent infestation; that's just lazy parenting. Even with a difficult-to-treat infestation, a child that IS being treated will have no more than a dozen lice on his/her head maximum, because the majority will have been removed through treatment. Any child who is crawling with them has a parent who CBA to do anything about it.

The trouble is, unless you want to restrict who your DC play with, you can't control this. Children don't remember not to touch heads or hug. The only solution that can keep your sanity intact is to adopt weekly checks of your own DC, stepping it up to a impromptu check if they have been around children you know or suspect of having lice. My DC have caught lice countless times, but I've never failed to eradicate them after three combings with the nitty gritty comb because I caught it early enough. Tedious, yes, but better than making my blood pressure boil by concentrating on the parents who don't bother.

It's making my head itch reading this thread!

It's making my head itch reading this thread!

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble here, but tying back hair doesn't make any difference at all I recently discovered. It is a myth. Lice don't crawl from hair to hair, they crawl from scalp to scalp apparently. Unless heads are touching, or very close to, they won't transfer.

no yanbu

yuk

Yanbu.