To think not getting rid of your child's head lice is a form of abuse.

[PMDD]

Head lice are doing the rounds again. My DD has come home YET AGAIN with head lice. I comb, I use chemicals, I get rid of the lice, then she comes home again with them.

When she gets them I phone all the mums of the friends she plays closely with to tell them to ensure they check their children.

But there is a handful of children across the school that just do nothing about it.

Is there anyway the law could be changed so that those children with nits can not come back to school until they are clear of nits.

Teenagers don't get them because they don't communicate with other humans - never mind run heads

Rub!

it can be a sing of abuse/neglect but not on its own.

i get why your annoyed, i think i woudl be to. ds1 whos 8 has never had them, ds2 who is 5 has had them once when he was 4 (he has chin lenthg hair) i think some children just have hair/scalps that are more enjoyable to the fuckers so no matter what they do they will keep getting them.

i do think if teachers know the children who have them they should be allowed to talk to the parents and i really cant see why they shouldnt be able to.

Aphra yes, that makes sense- because the treatments aren't that effective even the best ones. If you follow the protocol described on the Bug Busters pages, even if you use a over the counter treatment, followed by combing on certain days (I can't remember which, I think it's day 1,5, 9, and one more) then you will break the cycle.

I agree about the long hair, my girls both had long hair and when they did get nits it was about an hour each of combing a couple of times a week for two/three weeks. However had they had nits for a year or all the time, I would have considered cutting it. As it was, I did cut one's hair into a bob and the other has it tied back all the time and this has drastically reduced the nit problem.

do you still go through it if there are no signs of lice/nits? dd used to get them and would be scratching her head all the time (of course, i went through it every day because i was actually quite freaked out by them ) but now she doesn't seem to, at least not that i can see in the areas of her scalp where they used to hang around. she never scratches either but should i still check with the comb?

(i woudn't have thought headlice just by itself was a form of child abuse btw)

YANB - My DSD comes to our house every week with nits, and I comb it, and treat it! Yet she still returns because her other 3 siblings (with her mother) are not treated. Its madness. Its a pain!

I definitely think that some children are more prone to headlice, my eldest (very thick hair like DH) seems to be constantly catching them, yet my youngest (ridiculously fine hair like me) never has... Headlice are bastards

Oh gosh I remember having my hair combed weekly and hedrin because one girls mum refused to treat her dd's hair because she didn't want to use chemicals so every other child had to suffer. Even the head teacher couldn't reason with her

YABU
My children constantly have nits - due to younger child's school. I wouldn't want to use chemicals all the time - I doubt it's good for children, and the nits come back very soon anyway. So I nit comb every time they shower. This keeps the numbers very low, and the children aren't remotely bothered by them. It's not a big deal.
They used to make children stay at home, and I think the reason they changed the rule was that children do need to get an education!!

glitz my xp's sister had them for ages because their 'd'm said she was allergic to the chemicals. what's wrong with a comb?

My children (now 12 and 13) have never had them. I have absolutely no idea why. We have had infested friends staying, outbreaks at school and nothing. I had them as a child. I combed whenever the alarm went out. But nothing.....

So no wisdom but more research might be able to spread their nasty taste (and I never get bitten by Mosquitos etc, but did have nits )

Ragwort- presumably if your DS has very short hair it means he is less likely to have hair to hair contact with another child to catch them? IME, it tends to be the children with long hair, who are forever redoing their hair and playing hairdressers and sharing brushes that catch and spread nits. Also anecdotal evidence suggests there are certain shampoos- coal tar and tea tree spring to mind- that the nits don't like or can't get a grip on the hair, so children using those are less likely to catch nits.

As people get older, they keep more of a personal space boundary which is why nits get less common when you get older. When's the last time you sat at work with your head touching someone else's? Primary school kids do it all the time.

Finally, some types of hair, particularly Afro, is notoriously hard to get rid of every last nit from. One parent came to us in desperation, he had tried everything to get the nits out of his daughter's Afro hair. In the end, we got permission for a member of staff to treat and wet comb her hair 2-3x a week until all the nits were gone, and her hair was kept in cornrows in between treatments.

The best way to keep nits at bay is to wet comb your child's hair at least once a week, preferably twice. That means that if they have got a louse off somebody at school, you can catch it before it lays eggs (and the eggs hatch, and breed). If you find several lice in your child's hair, chances are they haven't been caught that day!

PS our school (UK) sends children home if they have live lice and request that the child is treated, and send a note round reminding parents to be vigilant. Problem is, the child comes back either having been treated, or saying they have (and we can't check), but the parents don't do the second treatment, or they have a hard to treat hair type, or the treatment didn't work due to resistance, and then we're back to square one.

DD's just had her first episode of headlice and whilst I hate them as much as the next person, you can see why they keep going round and round. Even if everyone in the entire class was treated, unless they were all treated simultaneously at least every three days, the phasing would mean that there would always be a few adult lice laying eggs. It's kind of amazing that there are ever any periods when a whole class is lice-free.

As for insisting on treatment with chemicals, that's simply not feasible. I can't use Hedrin on my DD, we have been to the GP to ask for an alternative but her eczema is too bad; her skin is too broken to be able to use even 'eczema-safe (but don't use on broken skin)’ treatments such as Hedrin and Lyclear. Would that we could use a 10-min treatment once and then again 7 days later!

It is a real hassle, I'm currently inflicting hour-long conditioners-and-combing sessions, with Nitty Gritty comb, on poor DD every 3 days. But I am not going to accuse other parents of neglect without evidence, shit happens and headlice are shit.

You don't need to use chemicals, though, that's the frustrating thing. You 'll never crack them just by using chemicals, they are becoming resistant to them!

if you have a good comb that can deal with the eggs then this eventually will work- the one I linked to (they are a charity, honest I don't work for them) has two combs, a very fine one and then an even finer one which gets the eggs out. You can use this with your usual conditioner (though I used to buy cheap conditioner at the pound shop for this purpose) so no extra chemicals needed. I think some of the combs just aren't up to the job, my friend had a metal one that was worse than useless and an electrical zapper that only zapped full grown adults and left the egg behind to hatch later and repeat, and repeat

All this 'treating' of headlice is the problem. They have built up immunity

And you are comfortable putting this increasingly stronger chemicals on your child's heads? Do you know what's in them?

Comb and condition is what works......every other day.

And the nits are the eggs, not the live louse.

Head lice are not a health hazard usually. Standard infestations are not a health risk to anyone, it's less of a problem than sending in kids too soon after D&V!

However - and this is seriously grim - a friend of mine is a higher level TA in a deprived area. One little boy was taken into care and he had to be taken to hospital as his head lice infestation was so bad they had embedded into his scalp

Ooh, I hate the little feckers. I reckon I could fund a nit nurse for our school, the amount I spend on treatments for DC1. And the trauma...she has thick wavy hair and screams when I comb, horrible for both of us.

I would love love love to inspect and treat her entire class. It must be someone in her class that keeps passing them on.

Also yy to comb and condition. Head lice also hate neem oil and vinegar.

Anyone else scratching?

rather than threatening parents for something that may be out of their control, it would make a lot more sense to bring back the nit nurse.

The problem is that even if people do comb and treat - unless they are simultaneously eradicated on every head, they'll re-colonise.

my head itches at the mere mention of them. urgh.

We had a girl in DD's class who expected her DD8 to rid herself of the pesky creatures with an electric comb.

Needless to say, her hair (by the look of it, she was intended to comb this herself in the mornings too) was full of them, huge, great big, giant, enourmous things. Her older sisters (High School age) were the same. Polite conversations and heavy-handed nudges from friends did nothing. Her poor teacher used to ask her, very nicely and diplomatically, to tell her mother.

I used to comb DD, only for her to come back home the next day with something the size of a horse galloping around. Obviously, I had not missed this. It is truly amazing how fast they can move at this size.

Constant combing, conditioner, insecticide makes their heads sore.

Anyway, the only answer was plaits or tight pony tail, grow out fringe and glue everything in place with a pot of cheap Boots hair gel. One girl used to come in with a concreted on ballet bun. Some of the eggs will be laid at the base of the ponytail, so when you come to undo it later, they will no longer be warm against the head and will not hatch. Not a quick fix, but it helps.

The poor girl, whose mother did not comb her hair was for ever faffing on with her hair and combing it at high school. She must have grown very self-conscious.

It would be wonderful if schools publicised this national bug-busting day and everyone treated on the same day to eradicate them.

Not going to happen though.

Oh wow, thetallesttower thank you so much for that link! The kit's even available on NHS prescription. DS has never had them yet, but as he has horrendously sensitive skin and has to use special detergents for clothes and only 2 shampoos don't cause a reaction, I was mildly worrying about what to do when he does get them. That comb kit solves the problem for us. Again, thanks so much.

And long-term infestations are supposed to be horrible. That's where the saying, "feeling lousy" comes from - weak and limp. I've never forgotten reading this article.