I'm very concerned about viruses and lice at nursery

[greeny369]

As a first time mom, a lot of things freak me out and make me question if that's normal. So my LO has started nursery, still settling in, which is taking longer than expected, but that's another story. Every morning I drop him off I see kids wildly coughing, noses leaking, rashes here and there. I mean.. I've heard from other parents around me how children get sick bi-weekly since start of nursery, but it just keeps bothering me that parents don't seem to care if their child is sick and still bring them to nursery. I empathise with parents who work full time and have no other option, but what about the other children? For me the cherry on the top of the cake was when I saw a piece of paper taped by the entrance gate the other day at our nursery saying they've found lice on one of the kids. Apparently very 'normal' for people working there and seemingly not an issue that needs addressing in any special way. Now I have debilitating fear of insects, obviously that's one of the reasons I'm shocked this is considered the norm. But then again, am I unreasonable thinking that nursery has to address this issue somehow? Be it by implementing extra cleaning routines, or removing the source of this occurance, until they are treated and confirmed to have tackeled the issue? When I asked these questions at the nursery, they just quickly dismiss me saying ' oh, its completely normal, if they don't get lice here they get it in primary or secondary, but essentially they eventually do ' followed by a big awkward smile. Maybe it's just me, but I'm considering changing nurseries. I'd love to hear another perspective on this.

DC2 is in year 5 (so they are all 9 going on 10) and they still have fucking headlice doing the rounds! It is relentless.

Nurseries and early years are absolute cesspits of germs, contagions and viruses. On the upside it does make for a robust immune system for the majority of kids.

I totally understand, OP

I felt the same.

But your child has to get ill to build a decent immune system

And lice and worms are easily treated

Try to enjoy each day, rather than being anxious and appalled (im talking to my younger self, too!)

🥰❤️

Anyone else start scratching their head when they read about head lice/nits?! 😅

I would avoid teatree products tbh. Teatree oil may have (poss mild) oestrogenic properties & is considered to be an endocrine-disruptor.

OP wait until your child goes to primary school and the at least once or twice a year head lice outbreak emails start.

It's the children with clean hair that get lice. DH used to comb a little olive oil or coconut oil through our DC's hair when there were lice at school. Occasionally he overdid it and their hair looked oily, but they never got lice, not even when their close friend (with very clean hair) did. The oil smothers the lice.

Incredibly unreasonable. You are going to need to develop some resilience.

I was literally doing as I read your comment but hadn't noticed 😅

I never had headlice. Not even when my brother had them. However dd1 caught them in year 1 and passed them to her sister. I naively thought that you used the special shampoo and they went. How wrong I was! Took a couple of weeks of combing, shampoos, combing. They always had clean hair but disliked it being tied up. Never had them since even when lice have been back in their classes.

Some children are also just snotty, they don't get the hang of properly blowing their nose until they are about three. Nurseries do try and keep them de-snotted but it's like Sisyphus and his boulder.

OP try child's farm hair spray stuff with tea tree which will hopefully deter the lice. Colds etc you just can't avoid unfortunately, it is rubbish but part of life. Good hand washing & hygiene but don't stress about it. Kids are pretty disgusting not much you can do about it!

Kids are gross though 🤷‍♀️ they are little germ and parasite factories.

It's part and parcel of having kids unfortunately.

On the plus side getting loads of bugs at nursery does your child's immune system a massive favour and can reduce the risk of autoimmune conditions and leukaemia.

Why would lice mean a child was being neglected?

Untreated lice, yes. But not just simply catching them. All that means is you've been close to someone who has them.

A paediatrician told me that if your child hasn’t had worms by the age of five, it just means the parents haven’t noticed them.

Can they go away on their own then? Because my sisters and I were never treated for worms as children. Do I still have them??

It's the joys of being a small child building an immune system. They catch and pass on everything.

And when they are all locked up at home. It gets them when they are let out of jail.
It just pushes it down the road.

What I'm really saying is my youngest was one of the kids who's time in nursery was affected by the two covid lockdowns, I think England might only have shut nurseries once, Scotland did it twice.
The following winter once in school was a nightmare for bugs and the P1s were then wiped out with Chicken Pox!

Pointless changing nursery or trying to lock them up at home with a nanny.

There's three episodes of Bluey - one called Nits & another two episodes (Bumpy & the Wise Old Wolfhound and TV Shop) that mention 'bum worms' aka threadworms/pinworms. It's pretty universal really.

I do all this, always have. Eldest used to get EVERYTHING and catastrophically. I had to leave a job and go self employed partly as a result.
Youngest is a bit more robust and shakes things off more easily, mostly.
Just because these things have helped for yours doesn't mean others simply aren't trying to ward off viruses or have weak kids.

My grandson has just started reception. I told my daughter to prepare herself for him being snotty by the end of the second week, if not the first. There are three certainties in this world - death, taxes and your kid bringing home all sorts over the course of their school years. This is how they strengthen their immune systems, it is what it is, short of homeschooling, there's bugger all you can do about it.

That said, my kids have never had lice, so it's not a certainty.

Maybe you would feel more comfortable with a childminder?

I follow the guidelines from nursery about sending my kid in when he’s sick. So no if he has a temperature, but yes for a clear runny nose. He basically gets on cough after another. If I kept him at home if he was anything but perfectly healthy I would lose my job.

Lice are inevitable and not a cleanliness issue. There's not really much the nursery can do to stop the spread as they only live on heads, so cleaning the nursery won't do anything.

Likewise, the germs are inevitable. Little kids are permanently snotty at this time of year and don't need to be kept home if they're well in themselves.

You just need to adjust. Don't let your anxiety overwhelm.

But it's worth trying isn't it. Sorry about your eldest but that's an exception and not the norm. I doubt you had your eldest on decent probiotics from age 1 and vits from 6 months consistently everyday though. Not many actually do that but it definitely works I've seen it in the difference from my 8 year old and 2 year old for example - I only started this on her from age 4 and for my 2 year old from 6 months.

We somehow seem to have got both our girls through nursery without getting nits, but it is very common.
You can't completly avoid it, but if you have girls, make sure their hair is securely tied back, ties, clips, headbands, as makes it less likely. I read somewhere that leave in conditioner can help as makes the hair more slippery, but that couod be nonsense.
Colds and coughs are standard, and it's better to get the frequent sickness out of the way now before they start school. Both mine went to nursery from 2nd birthday and didn't have a single sick day in 3 years of school.
Make sure you are giving a good multivitamin with vitamin D to help boost their immune system
We did get DD2 vaccinated against chickenpox after DD1 caught it at 2 and was very unwell and it's still covered in scars at age of 9, but otherwise I tried not to worry too much.

You have a small child. Unless you plan to live in a plastic bubble, they will catch coughs, colds, viruses, stomach bugs and will probably get nits and possibly worms! If you feel very anxious about this, I would recommend you get help because these things are perfectly normal and just what happens when you mix a lot of children together!

Kids get ill when they come in contact with viruses.
Its how the immune system then 'remembers' and reacts next time they're exposed.
No way around it... and it needs to happen.
If you kept them in a bubble and ejected them at 18.... it would happen then.

Hi OP, they used to send the kids with lice home to get treated, but they don't anymore. I'm not sure why. You could see a green child, with its head spinning round, blasting windmills of snot at all around, barely able to pause between coughs and some parents and nurseries will say 'it's just a minor cold and it's good for every other child here's immune system', rather than send the poor kid home. They pick and choose which viruses are good for immune system and which ones aren't, based on fuck knows what. Kids will get sick at nursery - how frequently and relentlessly depends on the nursery and other parents.

I remember all the times I had to sit in the bath with that horrible lice killing stuff on my head, they were constantly going round schools and that was over twenty years ago. Not much you can do to prevent them

I was the same as that growing up- now I catch all the childhood illnesses from my kids haha.

OP it's totally normal, I have 3 kids and they all got hit with lots of bugs when they started nursery- it does calm down again but there's always a surge of illness around this time of year as well.

Nits aren't pleasant but they're easily treatable, we use a hedrin leave in one overnight and then a quick comb through- it works every time.