To think lockdown has been a huge headlouse eradication opportunity and we will soon see who hasn't treated their kids

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

We've all had it. You keep bloody combing out the bloody lice and they just keep catching them again at school. Every one blames everyone else.

But if we've maintained proper social distance and continued to treat through lockdown, the critters should have taken a serious hit. Anyone who has been in lockdown and still has them now - Please realise you were the problem and you need to learn to treat properly.

AIBU

Hang on, are people treating for nits twice a week even when their children don’t have them?! Until what age? That seems like overkill.

Also, not sure where the shaming comes from on this thread. We are all educated enough to know that headlice do not favour unwashed hair.

One of the benefits of lockdown has been to get rid of the nits that kept on cropping up. I use nitty gritty comb now but hedrin once is effective provided you not around anyone who's failing to treat.

Idiot think they're treating justvcombing through.

I don't rather. Fat fingers tiny screen ...

ExactlyThePlantsitter. It's ridiculous to suggest children are neglected because they have nits

This.

When I was teaching I combed my hair with a nit comb and conditioner every time I washed it.

Not worrying about nits has been one of my favourite bits of lockdown.

Here is Wales is appears that will be in lockdown forever (numbers go up, no one says why, Welsh politicians drunk with devolved power), so at least I never have to worry about nits again. I will donate my nitty gritty to you poor English people who receive free education.

(misses point, I know)

Also, not sure where the shaming comes from on this thread. We are all educated enough to know that headlice do not favour unwashed hair.

It's not shaming, most of our Dcs have had it too! But I am incredibly frustrated by the parents who barely address it, or like my own DSis, who probably tells all the mums at school that she's working hard at it and is very unlucky, or denies the lice outright, but privately complains to me how she can't possibly deal with it during the week, so combs on a Saturday only, and then wonders why her kids are perpetually infested (and why pre-lockdown we'd get grumpy when they'd come over to visit and they're crawling again).

We had the nit phase a few years ago. Had to use Hedrin Once twice. Didn’t honestly rate any of the nit combs, even the nitty gritty. We needed different treatments go our different hair (DS very fine and a mousse worked well, me forget it, industrial oil needed. It was time consuming and expensive. God knows how families who are already struggling manage to afford it.

This thread has a nasty shaming element to it.

I think a lot of people are misguided about the "chemical" treatments too.

Something like 95% of head lice in the UK are pesticide resistant. They can't be poisoned in the way we used to. The common treatments (Hedrin, full marks, lyclear) are just a concentrated dimeticone (the same thing in many ordinary conditioners) which help by basically coating lice to help suffocate them ans enable them to be combed out.

Nothing reliably kills 100% of the eggs/nits these days. The only way to tackle a bad infestation is the whole family combing thoroughly with a nitty gritty least every other day to remove newly hatched lice before they can lay more eggs, until the lifecycle is complete (3-4 weeks).

I am very sympathetic when kids are in school as there is the potential for constant reinfection but during lockdown is the best chance any one has ever had.

It's not about shaming. It's not shaming to say there are people out there who don't deal with this because it's hard. It is. Very bloody hard.

For anyone on a low income, a GP can prescribe a nitty gritty comb and other products.

We didn’t get them until DD was 11, they were impossible to get rid of. The thing that worked for us was coconut oil. I’d leave it on my hair for as long as possible and comb through.

Captainmycaptain

Sterling effort. I salute you. I'm sure in many cases the lice are spread by parents and teachers who focus on the kids but forget go treat themselves.

Yabu I hope you don't express these nasty judgey views around your children for them to pick up on. Many children will have been neglected in lockdown, their parents will not have bothered to treat nits, whilst that's something for school/social care to hopefully pick up when they're back in school, it's not for you to comment on. This is exactly the type of attitude that increases social exclusion of children from challenging home background who don't have control over their presentation, unwashed clothes, dirty teeth, being taunted in the playground that they've got nit

I get it annoying but please stop. I was the kid who always had nits, and I hated it. But what could I do. Once I was old enough to have access to money from birthdays etc and could go to shops by myself (about 11) I did treat them myself. But for most of primary school I needed a competent adult to sort it, and didn't have that.

My mum tried her best to parent, but in all honesty her best wasn't really good enough. I also went hungry form time to time and if I wasn't getting fed at school this would have been much worse.

Please remember the kids you are trying to exclude are the most likely to need to be there.

Lockdown has proven my point that the nasty little critters were coming from pre school. Youngest DC was plagued. I was told, on here, that it was more than likely me not treating properly, which I knew it wasn't.

@MyNameHasBeenTaken we have NitWits, bought from Amazon. It's been 100% effective for us. DD is autistic and combing her hair is an absolute no. She cannot cope with it sensory-wise. (Day to day it's brushed very briefly with a Tangle Teazer, and she still howls, and it's quite short and fine hair.)

On the odd occasion that she's had lice I have used NitWits, which she is able to cope with. Used it on myself too, to be certain of not passing them backwards and forwards. (No other kids, and DH shaves his head!) Honestly one treatment and they are GONE, no combing.

I may be neglectful by standards on here but I only check her head from time to time, with a magnifying glass and lamp. I don't comb routinely because it's just not an option for us. Fortunately her hair is very light coloured and fine, so any 'activity' in there is really obvious especially with the magnifiying glass and light.

Blackside

This is a parenting forum. I am expressing these views to an adult audience. I don't there's anything judgey about discussing management of a public health risk among adults.

No one is here inciting anyone to bully neglected children.

Forever

I'm so sorry this happened to you. This is why imho there is a role for school nurses/nit nurses to ensure children who arent treated at home can be treated at school.

Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. It's a public health issue and there has to be some public responsibility instead of this joke where schools sometimes dont even tell the parents of a child that they are infected.

everyone blames everyone else

Eh? When my kids get nits I inform the school/other parents, treat and move on. Until the next time. Then repeat. Same goes for all the other (nice and sane) parents at our school. Are there really people who stand at the gates and dish blame or gossip over this? What a massive fucking waste of energy.

My eldest picked them up shortly before school was cancelled and passed them on to me and to her younger sibling. We kept passing them round and round for about three weeks!

Never mind the kids, it's being an ADULT with head lice during social distancing that really sucks (no lockdown where I live but we voluntarily socially distanced for a couple of months). I treated my own hair, tried to get all the nits out of my own hair with the comb, but you really can't get every last nit out when it's your own hair! Some of them have to be scraped off with your fingernails because the comb doesn't get all of them.

So I showed DH some pictures of nits and lice online, and asked him to go through my hair and search for nits, stressing that every last one must be removed. "Nothing there!" he exclaimed cheerfully after looking through my hair. I was like.... "Are you SURE?" "Yes, nothing there!" Well, there obviously were nits there, because the lice came back. I treated again with the lotion, and we went through the same thing all over again, and the lice hatched and came back again....

Finally, I went ballistic and basically yelled "I AM ISOLATED FROM EVERY ADULT EXCEPT YOU RIGHT NOW. I NEED SOMEONE TO GO THROUGH MY HAIR AND GET EVERY LAST NIT OUT. EVERY SINGLE ONE. NOT JUST GLANCE AT MY HAIR AND SAY YOU CANNOT SEE ANYTHING. I AM SORRY TO YELL BUT I AM REALLY REALLY RELYING ON YOU RIGHT NOW!!!!"

(Sorry for shouty caps, but I really was at the end of my tether by this point---like, seriously, what could I do? I really was stuck! Couldn't see the back of my own head, and couldn't ask anyone other than DH to look for me!)

Well, in the end he looked at the online pictures again, and went through again, and this time he managed to find and pick out the last fucking eggs because after that I was lice-free and so were the kids.

But it really makes you think---what would I have done if I had been a single parent? Complete nightmare!

Our household got them for the first time during lockdown - we defo didn’t have them before so no idea how we got them

Fassbender

Your approach is ideal. Not consistent everywhere. Where I live, a local middle class parent very well known in the community simply didn't treat her 3 daughter's for years saying she was "too busy".

She would also regularly deny they were the problem but refused to comb more than once a week.

Kokeshi123

Well done for smashing it tho. That's the spirit!

I will caveat all posts - I do sympathise hugely with any single parent who caught them during lockdown as that really is killer bad luck and a genuine nightmare to treat.

I have combed through all three of my dcs hair, they're clear. I hope never to see a nit again.