headlice nightmare!

[Trinaj]

I'm having absolute hell with my dd (7).
She has had headlice on and off (more on than off!) since OCTOBER!
To start with she'd get them, then we'd spend 2 weeks getting rid of them, then 2 weeks later they'd be back again.
Got rid of them over Christmas, 2 weeks back at school - infested again!
Now it's got to the stage where i don't know whether she's still picking them up or they're just not clearing.
We have a 'nitty gritty' comb which we use EVERY time we wash and i'm now treating her hair once or twice a week, every week.
I'm totally fed up and don't know what else to do.
I have discussed cutting her hair short, but keep hoping I don't have too, I have also been recommended to stop washing her hair with shampoo.
It's getting so expensive and none of them appear to work.
I have spoken to the school and they'll do nothing except send out letters - again!
I'm so cross, I want to get the parents of the kids who are infecting mine to pay for the treatments.
Sorry for the rant .

We had this for years, both mine have v thick hair which is a nightmare to comb. We changed schools in the summer and only had them once which seems to prove my theory of reinfestation. I still can't bring myself to take them to the hairdressers though

Invite the culprit over for the afternoon, delouse him/her. Then repeat the week after.
Bribe culprit with sweets so he/she wont tell parents!

I like your idea of de-lousing the culpirit! But there's 3 of them we KNOW of, I haven't got that long, lol!

I know headlice can be a nightmare but please don't treat over and over with pesticide shampoos - they are extremely toxic and very bad for children's health - Hedrin is the only safe one as it isn't a pesticide.

We had a huge problem with them last year, the boys had never had them before then suddenly couldn't rid of them.

We tried all the usual stuff, didn't work, spoke to a pharmisist and he said to try olive oil, put it on at night, comb through, leave it half an hour or so, comb again, make sure you put old towels or something down on their beds because the oil get's everywhere, in the morning comb again, wash hair with washing up liquid, voila! Gone.

After 6 weeks of them not going, they were gone in a night, and they only picked them up once since, did the oil and they were gone again, touch wood nothing since.

Good luck!

My daughter has had eggs on occasion and she has really thick, down to her bottom, curly hair - NIGHTMARE!

When I have found them I have washed all clothes and bedding at 60 degrees, put stuffed toys in a bag and put them away for a week, checked all our hair too and boiled all combs (don't do this with an expensive Denman brush - rubber deteriorates!). To keep them at bay I add a few drops of tea tree to her shampoo and conditioner and make a spray of water with a few drops of tea tree and lavender, which I use everytime I comb her hair in the morning. Her hair is always tied back and plaited to the ends. Another thing I do is to run the hair straighteners through once a month or so - I doubt a nit could stand 200 degree plus GHD's! They are my weapon of mass destruction*

• I use a heat protectant when doing this and only do it once a month or less

I second the olive oil too - After washing, I part her hair into small sections and rub a little oil into her scalp.

I had this with DD1, got so fed up of only getting her clear during school holidays I took matters into my own hands, I knew who the culprit was so I just walked up to her Mum in the playground one morning and quite loudly said "Just to let you know my daughter has had nits, as she sits next to X in some lessons it is probebly worth checking her hair" - much spluttering and 'I don't know what Im looking for', next thing her daughter was off school for a few days, when she came back problem solved!!

Must admit to quite a smug feeling as this mum was one of a clique that were quite snobby - no skin off my nose that she never spoke to me again

Depending on the age of your child it might be best to explain what you are going to do first!

I have also been there with bells on, mine were getting reinfected every time I cleared them, you can usually tell as there will be one or two fully grown huge nits if the infestation is recently caught from another child, whereas if there's lots of smaller ones, it's probably that you didn't clear the eggs when you treated them last time and they've just grown big enough to see them.

My tip is to buy the bug-busting kit from this charity

www.chc.org/

It's about £6 or free to those who have free prescriptions (you can ask the doctor to give you it). They are just brilliant on this website, they explain the whole life-cycle, and how you can break it.

So, if I get an outbreak now (which is rare), I shove on tonnes of conditioner, sit them in front of the TV with a lolly and comb through the hair, using the increasingly finer combs. I've found other combs not to be fine enough and to let the eggs escape; they have a purple one that gets the tiniest eggs. You do this every two to three days (they say how often, I can't actually remember), I find two or three go's is enough and then you are free. You then keep on top of any further outbreaks by checking the hair regularly so as to catch any adult marauders from other children's heads quickly before they lay many eggs, just when you are washing or combing in the morning.

Two other things help this; regular trims so their hair isn't knotty otherwise the combing is really a pain with long hair and I second the person who said put it in plaits too.

Good luck with it, I don't work for the charity (honest), but I think their comb pack is brilliant and has also been tested and the results published in peer review journals (yes, there are academics who do this!) so it's not just some company out to make money of you repeating not that effective or potentially toxic treatments. I found Hedrin rubbish, which is why I have just resigned myself to the odd 10 day comb-out if required.

I love the idea of saying loudly about nits to the offending parent!

I am a bit sad but I've just been on their website (I bought my kit about 18 months ago) and there's even a book 'Kipper gets nits' in which their kit is used...(something to read whilst they are covered in conditioner...)

I'd second (third?!) the tea tree, but I use a shampoo - you could try Lanes Tea Tree Shampoo for children

I always use tea tree shampoo AND conditioner - every time.
It used to always work but not anymore, perhaps it's not as strong as it was.

SeasideLil, what you say about the size of the lice makes perfect sense.
I was finding that she had just a few big-uns, no obvious eggs, and no little ones.
Upon combing tonight I notice little ones and eggs like i did at christmas - that were obviously not destroyed/removed before.

Thanks for all your advice, I have stripped her bed and cushions and toys etc... Will find an even finer comb than the nitty gritty one, and try stronger tea tree, like I used to use.

Will let you know how we get on.

Trinaj, this is someone that tried Nitmix...

Add message | Report | Contact poster By MadHairDay Tue 09-Jun-09 18:46:03
Well just used the nitmix stuff - wow! Thank you so much Solo - it is brilliant. I only had to use such a little bit to spread all through the hair (and dd has a fair amount of it) and it made it a dream to comb through - and the amount of the critters I got out was pretty scary tbh, I'd thought there wasn't many there at the moment as I'd been religiously wet combing, but this stuff seemed to bring them all out of the woodwork, must have got hundreds of eggs and quite a few live (ewww) ones. Kept going for ages and they were still coming. Am going to put the daily spray on every morning and see how it goes - but wanted to say thanks for the recommendation. It seemed expensive, but actually it will last a lot longer than some of the other treatments out there because it spreads so well.

I woudl also recommend the bug busting kit. I was using a nitty gritty but it was ripping out DD1's very thick hair and causing agony, and it wasn't catching the eggs (I could see them still on the hair after 2 or 3 goes through)
The bug busters are great, just conditioner onto dry hair and comb through, takes about half an hour, then rinse and comb out the eggs..

I have just tried the hedrin GEL - different to the normal formula. I wasnt going to as was disappointed with the original formula one. The Gel was fantastic - and it works in only an hour - there was a 15 minute one but I was a bit . dcs have thick curly hair - both dds have very long hair. It takes hours to nit comb. I left it on for about 1.5 hours, before I even started washing their hair the nits were falling off. They were sat in the bath, without water waiting their turn and notice several had fallen from their hair into the bath. The nits were dead, not alive like last time and a lot of them were just laying on top of the hair. The real nightmare is trying to wash the lotion out. As it is more the consitency of olive oil it took me 4 shampoos before I managed to get the hair to lather and therefore know that all the gel was rinsed out. I went through the wet hair with the nitty gritty comb and only on 1 child did i get a couple of dead ones out. The rest were eggs. The gel is supposed to kill the eggs too. It needs to be repeated in 7 days but am very impressed as hair like ds is just the worse for nit combing.

Oh, dear, horrid ain't it? They seem to be far more prevalent these days than when my older kids were at school - 80's through to early 00's. And, as a child, I don't ever remember getting them (60's) though we had the nit-nurse do the rounds at school. My youngest, DS14, seems to have made a career out of it since Primary. Advice from surgery was lots of conditioner - apparently they weren't allowed to recommend or prescribe proprietary stuff. We did use chemicals but best defense seemed to be combing at every opportunity.

PS - while they're ghastly and itchy of course, head-lice aren't actually harmful and apparently carry no disease - that's a comfort then.

The secret is don't wash their hair too much! Nits like a clean head! We use tea tree shampoo and put tea tree oil behind their ears and on the nape of the neck. No nits yet, must be doing something right!