to die on this particular hill? (nits)

[TheWayTheLightFalls]

DD’s class/school is a nitfest, has been since reception. I did the research, bought the Hedrin/Vosene/NitNot/NitWit/cheap conditioner/Derbac/Vamoose/Full Marks/various combs and check or treat her hair as needed, probably spending an hour a fortnight on average over the past four years.

DH was horrified at this being a thing - he reckons that in his (Soviet) childhood anyone with nits would be sent home and not allowed back to school until they were clear. He also moaned endlessly about the fact of us (me) having to do the treatments/checks, how greasy the treatment leaves the bathtub, anything really. Which was galling since he did fuck all, but there we are.

DH had one job (eagle eyed readers may see where this is going) - tie up DD’s hair before school and spray the peppermint thing that does actually seem to have some deterrent effect, on the two days I go to work early. He doesn’t do this consistently, hardly ever actually. I have reminded him x times.

I checked DD this weekend, found nits, did the whole shebang. DH was napping at the time I think. Later I told him for the nth time that this is incredibly frustrating, and he needs to do the two things that actually seem to make a difference when I am not there. I threatened to stop managing the rest of the process if he didn’t since I am basically wasting my time.

Yesterday for irrelevant reasons DD was off school first thing; he dropped her at my work for me to take her to an appointment and then school later. Were the things done? Nope. I’d even left the bloody spray on the breakfast table so it was in sight.

I rang him up; I let him know that I was dropping the rope on nits. He could manage them, or not, but I am out. Cue lots of frothing and anger and I can’t do this/he can’t do this.

I have every intention of sticking to my guns on this. Aibu?

The nit nurse didn't work because she came once a term and missed every outbreak in between. It just wasn't effective.

There are clearly edge cases.

Untreated nits and matted hair requiring a GA obviously is severe neglect - but it's nowhere near the op's situation.

It's like saying 'not feeding your child is ABUSE!'. But one case might be a severely malnourished two year old who eats every other day...and another a single instance of forgetting to make a lunch on a particularly busy day. BOTH are instances of 'not feeding your child' but clearly both are not abuse.

I was lucky and never got them but i
lived in fear of that nit comb. My mum would just rip it through my long, easily tangled gait and rip out chunks of hair. I’d be squealing and she’d be shouting at me to shut up! Honestly it was a torture item.

Op you should be checking for eggs not nits. A nit egg takes around ten days to hatch and they are visible and easily removed with a nitty gritty comb.

If you are checking for nits and finding nits you have left it too long between checks and not noticed the eggs. If this is the way you approach the problem it’s likely your daughter has ongoing nits because you’re not removing the eggs.

Children's services got involved in a child's life for failing to treat headline consistently they classed it as abuse and neglect

This is what I do. I promise, no nit stone has gone unturned in this house. I think you probably know that people on MN and elsewhere use “nits” as a catchall for headlice at whatever stage of their glorious lifecycle they are.

DH is once again being an arse this evening.

Nits are the eggs. The live creatures are head lice.

You may have to oversee his work when your daughter inevitably gets nits from him forgetting. He won’t want to repeat it.

A lot of people underestimate how thoroughly you need to comb, and for how long, to temove all lice and new lice as they hatch before they reproduce. They treat, comb a couple more times over the next week, don't see more & stop.

A week later the last few eggs are hatching & some nymphs are maturing. By another week they've "caught nits again!" Except they haven't. They were never gone, its the same infestation.

I'm not in UK. When my DC were small, any outbreak of nits was literally notifiable and the child not allowed back into school (or other activities) without a doctor's certificate declaring them nit free.

And we never had them, and i didn't hear about them that much because it wasn't allowed to run rampant like you have in UK.

Have you told her to not touch her head to anyone else? It’s a myth they can jump. If your heads don’t touch and you don’t share hats it’s hard to catch.

it’s also not enough to just wash their hair. You have to comb through with the fine comb and remove the eggs. The treatments don’t kill eggs. They say they do but they are lying. You
also need to treat and comb through again in about 5 days after treatment to get any from eggs you missed that hatched, and wash the bedsheets. I buy a bottle of cheap conditioner and use that to comb through. I use like a whole bottle.

sorry I realise you wanted advice on lazy husbands but in my experience, when dsd was little and coming to us every week with lice we thought she was just constantly catching it but it was really just not being treated correctly. The live ones were killed but then the eggs would hatch and be back the following week.

Soviet times ended in 1990. Anyone who was brought up in strongly soviet times will be having grandchildren now, surely?

Mine kept coming home with them one year.
Then it just so happened that I was invited to an open classroom and invited to sit in the storytime corner, which was a hideous furry carpet strewn with loads of the mankiest old corduroy beanbags and loads of blankets, none of which looked as though they’d seen a Hoover or wash in years 🤢
As an aside, do you blow dry her hair after washing? The heat can be effective. People don’t want to use heat on children’s hair but I think it’s effective in the long term if you’re at the stage of using chemicals so often.

I was a teenager in the 90s and I'm not quite a grandma territory. What's your point though?

You could collect some and sprinkle them on his pubes while he's asleep?

Joking... Sort of

You can’t actually get into a standoff. One of you need to treat your dd immediately if you find bits. Letting her suffer and itch would be cruel.

@TheWayTheLightFalls I'd get onto the school and tell them to get the nurse in to deal with it! They can then send letters home to particular parents.

My DS (Y4) kept coming home with nits. I was brushing his hair with the nitty gritty every night so there was NOTHING in his hair. Yet after school there would be large lice so clearly someone he was playing with had nits as they don't grown that big in 24 hours!!

I got the teacher to email and message all parents as DS hated the nit comb. Still brush his hair weekly just to check!

I'd get your DD to TELL her dad he needs to do the spray.

I would be out arsing him like an arsey super hero. Every single useful thing he does, I would say ‘it would take even less time than that to have sprayed your child’s hair, you would if you cared.’ If he points out he’s done something I’d say ‘do you want a than you? It takes much more time than that to de nit our daughters hair and you’re so appreciative you’re sending her to school with a neon sign saying nits please come back here’, every thing I did, id add up in terms of time to do a lice treatment.

. I finished school and went to university in 92.. my peers are still in the child raising stage. I don’t expect to have grandchildren for at least 15 more years.

I would want to murder him over it tbh.

I agree with stopping doing something that directly impacts him, as you are tired from all the nit treatment.

Nits and worms are the bane of my existence and I wish schools in the UK could take a harder stance on them.

DS had just had his second bout of worms, and when I asked the doctor if I was doing something wrong he said no, and that it's thought 1 in 10 young school aged kids have got worms at any given time so it just circulates and circulates until they're no longer in contact with the source or they stop cross contaminating.

I'm dreading nits. He's autistic and hates his hair touching and it will just be torture but I feel that it's inevitable. There was a patient zero in my class at school who was never properly dealt with and I went from having bum length hair to a bowl cut after my nth reinfection. Don't know if it's dramatic to say it was traumatising but that's what I'm going with.

Your dh is a dick.

But...if you are only going through dd's hair once a fortnight you are not breaking the cycle in her own her. You need to comb daily and treat every 3 days. You also need to treat every member of the household, and hot wash all towels and bedding to get rid of eggs

Personally I found the treatment stuff utterly useless. On a weekend, soak her hair in detox, wrap in clingfilm and leave over night. My dsc used to get them all the time, their dm refused to do anything because her hairdresser said it was pointless as nothing worked. MN recommended the detol thing and it worked a treat!

Holy hell the nit thing is bad at your school. My kids have never had them. School needs to talk to parents.

You are being unreasonable in that you need to keep treating your daughter. Bizarre way of getting back at DH.

my point is that using "was brought up under the Sovs" is a weak excuse for anything

Excuse?
I did not excuse the man. I quite clearly said that he is incorrect about the notion that kids were sent home with nits. Maybe they were in some more... ahem.. Westernised parts of the Block but it wasn't the norm. I also said that Soviet men were not brought up to look after their children. At best they were always at work, at worst - drunk in a ditch. So I expect him to have a similarly shitty attitude because that's the reality he grew up with. Where is the excuse part?
I wouldn't date one of them myself, to be honest. It's not OP's job to teach him how to be an adult.