Nits!

[WeWereInParis]

This is probably a stud question.

DD (3.5) has a very good friend at nursery and today her mum texted me to say she'd found nits in her DD's hair.

So I figured I would comb through DD's hair this evening to see whether she had them as well. But I realised I don't know what they look like - DD doesn't have very long hair and it's quite thin so was easy to comb through and I definitely didn't find anything obviously lice-like but there were some pale brown bits that came out on the comb. These were very flat and flake like - is this nits, or just dandruff?? I think it was just dandruff but I'm not sure, is it obvious if it's nits?

Google just shows me horrible pictures of the headlice all zoomed in, rather than a nice clear picture of what they look like on a comb!

DD has very dark hair, would any eggs be fairly obvious from having a look through it while dry?

Hi,

Eggs can look white or light brown depending on when they are about to hatch. The way you would know is the browner ones always make a popping sound when squeezed. I know that sounds disgusting but that is how I learnt how to tell the difference.

You could get a nit comb as they comb through the hair more thoroughly and also can purchase a special shampoo which is supposes to kill them off if she does have confirmed nits. Good luck

The way I used to know for definite with DS was to wet comb with white conditioner (cheap and lots of it), paper towel and a nitty gritty comb. I would methodically go through his hair which would take ages. The other combs are useless and picked nothing up.

I would have sworn he was nit free...reader he was infested. Short hair and frequent combing stopped them from coming back, once we had all been treated with hedrin.

I've always struggled to find nits on my kids hair - also very fine and fair. My way of distinguishing between flakes and nits is that flakes can easily come out using the tips of my fingers, to put the nits off I have to use my nails. Also when you put nits on a piece of white paper or tissue they have a distinctive shape (sort of slightly fatter at one end with a kind of tail on the end) and they show up brown on the paper even when they looked white in the hair. Also I've never got a nit off with a nit comb - our hair is just too fine.

@WeWereInParis what comb were you using, out of interest

@NoEffingWay I was using a nit comb - just a standard white one, not a nitty gritty one (which I'd not heard of but have just googled, is it worth getting?). I put a lot of white conditioner on her hair and was combing through with that. She was surprisingly compliant!

I don't think the flakes were nits, they were sort of an uneven shape. I will go through her hair again though.

@WeWereInParis honestly, the nitty gritty is worth the money, I didn't know DS had nits until I used them, it helped to get rid of them and it didn't hurt him to use it. He gave them to me once ☹️ so I got to use it on my hair (shoulder length) and was okay there too.

I promise I don't work for them!