To think if your kid has head lice, sort it out!

[Sigyn]

Ok I am so fed up with this.

My kids have several friends whose parents basically will not treat head lice.

1. They do not want "harsh chemicals" on their kid's head.
2. They cannot be arsed do not have the time to spend hours each night for a week or so fine combing each kid's hair.
3. They have near religious beliefs in the power of one or all of the following: tea tree oil, coconut oil and/or neem.

I am deeply about neem btw. Apparently, it can kill the eggs. So you don't want to put "harsh chemicals" on your kid's head (the active ingredient in Full Marks, for example, is a drying agent, a bit like those those little silica packets)-but you will put something on their head so toxic and pervasive that it can get through the shell of an egg? (but, yk, your business...).

Lice are not a mystical mysterious thing. This is how you kill them. Either use a OTC formula or similar to kill the eggs, and comb through, repeatedly, until they are gone (resistance, you might have missed a bit esp with long hair, etc) OR do the same, using conditioner, mayo, coconut oil, whatever floats your boat and a Nitty Gritty (ideally) until they are gone. Then do it all again a week later as the eggs start to hatch. Then tie up your kids hair into pigtails.

It takes hard, bloody work and I am SO sick of it.

This is the prevalent culture in the circles we mix in. Basically, medical intervention=bad. Unpronounceable names on medicine= bad. Untested, potentially dangerous and/or ineffective "medicines" = great, possibly transcendent.

Oh and fwiw, I think even with a chemical spray you need to comb through. I don't think those who use sprays get off the hook.

I might invest in some coconut oil. The lice we have going round the family have survived a Hedrin treatment plus repeated combing. I never found any in my hair despite knowing they were there. They are so bloody persistent. Plus my cat had fleas (which have gone now thank god). Nightmare

Do you back comb your hair to get the comb down on to the scalp IYSWIM? It's hard to do on myself and I have really long hair.

Don't they send kids home from school if they have headlice?

They aren't allowed to check if a child has them, never mind send them home.

Take one bottle of unscented very mild shampoo (eg baby shampoo) to it using a pipette add:-

10 drops lemon oil
10 drops thyme oil (gone back to Granny's solution cos the woo woo crew wafters mean that inner city lice have mutated to be totally immune to tea tree!)
10 drops rosemary oil.

This combo kills, sterilises or paralyses the little buggers depending what stage of the life cycle they are at. My mother, a retired East end teacher swears by it.

Now add the same combo of drops to either a bottle of mild olive oil, or gentle conditioner, depending on hair type, and get thee to combing like someone is holding a gun to your head. If you have to leave in and send sprog to school with a vicky pollard facelift style for a day (oooh how common, but at least the other Mums'll know you CARE about not having a kid covered in blood sucking parasites!)

If after 7 days this hasn't worked go to the bloody chemist and if the mixture recc'd for super resistant mutant bugs contains tar, neem, paraffiin or any other noxious substance then put up, shut up & just use it at the weekend when your child doesn't have to be out in public (by the way lice crawling round a collar distracts from the most virtuoso violin performance!).

If after a month you still can't rid of the boogers then it's time for those waist length (tied in neat pigtails when around other kids I hope?) tresses to go down to a number 4 or 5 until you CAN get it under control. If you don't have time to condition the crew cut rub DE into the scalp and brush out as an emergency measure only (Dichotomous earth will dry the skin and scalp too much if used other than VERY occasionally).

I'm afraid I only have limited sympathy for the woo woo crew on this one having been blessed the sort of mixed race nappy hair, (or wire wool?) that breaks metal nit combs for light entertainment myself.

Back in that working class multi-ethnic inner city deprived area we had the odd outbreak of ring worm and scabies, probably caused in part by overcrowded living conditions yet these were nipped in the bud pronto. All parents kept a sharp eye out, noone judged, anyone unlucky enough to get it was commiserated with and the child promptly treated. The result was those outbreaks were short lived, and normal service + moaning about the lack of a nit nurse to best advise parents resumed.

Many diseases are spread by blood sucking parasites in the tropics and these untreated kids are a potential reservoir for a future pandemic here in the UK.

Am I the only one who's head started itching the moment I read the thread title?

YANBU

So.... if Neem (whatever that is) is a pesticide, does that mean it actually works?

I also have a horrible feeling that I can't shake. I know its probably stupid but I used so much HL stuff on her and it was so strong (this was the early 90s) that somehow it might have caused her to get ill

Devere If that was the case, the connection would have been discovered and publicised long ago. Gallons of that stuff were used in millions of households. Please don't think like that

We need Nit salons like the States have. Bring back Nitty Nora and send the kids with 'friends' home until they're treated. We've had an ongoing issue with dsd for over a year now, feel like shaving her head

I also have a horrible feeling that I can't shake. I know its probably stupid but I used so much HL stuff on her and it was so strong (this was the early 90s) that somehow it might have caused her to get ill

Oh Devere only just saw that :-(

It would be known by now if there was a link. Probably 90% of kids growing up in the 80s/90s had strong stuff used on them. I really agree, we'd know by now if a link existed. I grew up before the 90s, christ only knows what dp and I had on our hair.

While I am an advocate of Harsh Chemicals, that's only because I think people don't like them because they don't get that actually they are usually less harsh and less nasty than, say, teatree or most neat essential oils (which can be bloody dangerous). In other words, I truly think Full Marks or Hedrin in their present formulation are safer than 3 drops of unicorn' piss in a litre of neat brandy, washed down with a widdershins dance and a lovely natural arsenic-and-rainbows chaser.

I agree bring back the very un pc....Nitty Nora....

I'm sure nits were never such a problem back then with Super stealth 'Nora' on the case

jeee lol I think yes neem works.

I wouldn't use it because from what I can ascertain its toxic as hell in the concentrations used. I mean this stuff can kill lice inside the egg. Nothing else OTC can claim that. That is powerful stuff. And I do not want anything on my kid's hair that is strong enough to get through an egg AND deadly enough to kill, until its undergo extensive safety trials. Which, interestingly, it hasn't.

In the words of Tim Minchin "You know what they call ?alternative medicine/?
That's been proved to work? / Medicine.?"

notes down neem

Oh, I wasn't asking so that I can use it. Obviously. Just wanted to... er, avoid.

Hedrin has NO CHEMICALS to be clear - it contains a natural substance that suffocates them (Silicone)

Mrs D - my mum was a teacher and we regularly had to have the nasty stuff on our heads overnight - it has no adverse effects - please don't be harsh on yourself xxxx

I nitty gritty the kids every friday bathtime. They've never had nits.

The kids holler and I hate it. But as I tell them, better to blitz it at the end of the week than get nits and have to do it every night until they're gone.

The nitty gritty won't go through my curly hair so I'd rather prevent them getting it than have the stress of treating all of us.

Sorry, haven't RTFT but stinkle if you are picking out just one or two every time you do your DD's hair, that means you're doing a good job! Those one or two are ones that she has picked up fairly recently and haven't had chance to lay yet. Hence why she is clear in the holidays- she hasn't come into contact with the child or children who are reinfecting her.

I never had nits as a child,but my DS's have had them numerous times.I always treat with "nasty chemicals" but seem to be in the minority,with most of the school mums using the tea tree/conditioner/comb method and I'd put the reluctance to use an OTC treatments down as a major cause of the enormity of the problem.

Surely only using the conditioner/combing combo means that your child still may have some eggs that can hatch over night and infect others ?

Personally I think that they should bring back the nit nurse and not allow children to return to school until they had been treated - I bet they'd be far less reluctance to use OTC methods if you had to keep your child at home for a fortnight whilst using the wet combing method.

How about having a "national nit day"? send every child home with a nit comb and a bottle of treatment.That would eliminate the bastards once and for all....................

Yanbu! Last year my kids had nits every month, drove me demented as my Dds have thick, curly hair and it would take me around four hours to do both their hair, their scalps would be sore, my arms would be sore and I was never out of the chemist getting hedrin and washing bedding. The final straw came when the pharmicist asked me if I was doing it properly...I went a bit psycho, then phoned the school and told them my kids would not be returning due to headlice. Incidentally letters started getting sent home. They are now in a different school...no headlice.

I honestly do think that failure to use chemical treatments are less effective, and I think the reason for this is not even necessarily the child not being treated properly-though I wonder if that's contributing.

I think if you are vigilant then it can, theoretically, be effective. Perhaps more so, conditioner plus combing vs just chemicals. But who prioritises delousing over Brownies, swimming lessons, chess club? So one night you slip...maybe two...and then-doing yourself is really hard, especially with long hair. So you probably just comb through whenever you get a minute, but again, that doesn't work, you need to systematically comb when wet. How many mothers have an hour to sit combing their hair? Yes, some, but many don't. How many dads actually are going to do this?

I think that the advantage of the chemical stuff is that its pretty effective even if you only use the chemicals. You don't have to comb, it has a decent chance of working without (at £25 a go for my family, you bet I comb, personally).

I'm not saying that the mechanical method doesn't work. But its harder, and there are more points for it to fail.

YADNBU

My niece in her last school got them all the time. My poor Dsis spent hours on an evening using full marks and trying to comb them all out, only for a week later to have her come back in scratching her head. It was all down to a few parents, who between them

• swore by vinegar
• didn't have time to comb them out
• couldn't afford the mousse
• denied that their child had lice at all

She took her out eventually and sent her to a new school for juniors, where she's never caught headlice. I wish schools had more power to kick parents up the arse for things like this!

WATER is "full of chemicals". The human body is full of chemicals. I just wish more people were properly scientifically educated, at least just enough to tell the difference between genuine big pharma conspiracies (Nestle?) and perfectly effective and safe treatments for common ailments.

Vaccinations, of course, are another area in which mass treatment makes sense and ill educated "ooh but it sounds UNNATURAL" individual choice does not. But I don't want to derail the thread, sorry.

There's no shame in getting head lice. The shame is in keeping them. I went to a posh girls' school, and the lower school had an outbreak when I was a senior. The school was fumigated while some little girls stayed home having their heads sanitized, and the rest went to the Boston Aquarium.

I can't use chemicals as DD2 reacts to everything we get here, abroad, so I use vinegar and olive oil. That has probably already been said, so apologies for any repetition. The vinegar dissolves the substance they stick the eggs on with and the oil, has to be olive or coconut oil, dissolves the exoskeleton of the adults.

But if you don't comb the hair through properly then the one egg that gets missed will hatch and start the entire process again.

OP YANBU

DD1's best mate's mum works long hours and so doesn't have time to comb through their hair. It took me 3 bloody months to get my DDs clear a few years ago, 2-3 hours combing alternate nights and treatment twice a week for each of them.

I can appreciate someone being reluctant to use chemicals but who seriously thinks that leaving their DCs with avoidable parasites living on the scalps is a good alternative?

Sigyn to answer your question, I had to go to a newly opened place that vacuums them off. I have long thick dark hair, just like DD1 - and her combing took three hours. There was no way I could ask a 9 year old to do that for me and DH was never home early enough.

I also spent a vast amount of money on things that are said to deter them, shampoo with rosemary, tee tree oil to add to regular shampoo and copper combs. Theory is combing daily leaves a trace residue of copper which deters them. We haven't had them again but I don't know if that is because of expensive combs/ shampoo or just DDs getting older and not playing as closely as small DCs do.

I meant I can't use the chemical shampoos and sprays here, sorry Catsofa

WATER is "full of chemicals". The human body is full of chemicals. I just wish more people were properly scientifically educated, at least just enough to tell the difference between genuine big pharma conspiracies (Nestle?) and perfectly effective and safe treatments for common ailments.

catsofa could actually do hugs.

Know how tea tree oil smells a bit like turps? Here's why (possibly). Its main ingredient is Terpinen-4-ol. Its in the termpine family of organic compounds, which several organic oils belong to. Other essential oils are structurally quite similar. You know those horrible nasty petrochemicals that you are trying to avoid? You know benzene, for example? Well, teatree, thymol (thyme oil), etc are generally what's known as "aromatic hydrocarbons" , which means that they are structurally not a million miles away from benzene.

Tea tree is actually not something I want around my kids because of the link to early puberty. They contain estrogen mimics. Tea tree is a known carginogen.

Cyclomethicone, on the other hand, one of the active ingredients in full marks, is a silicone ring with carbon groups coming off. Its in all sorts of hair products-there is actually a reasonable chance that if you are using it in the conditioner if you avoid Harsh Chemicals but comb through instead. Its certainly sold to people who want to make their own toiletries, its not a restricted chemical. Isopropyl Myristate sounds bad too but its basically a saturated fat derived from nutmeg.