Ewww, nits!

[thattravelphotographer]

Please help!

First time experiencing nits and I'm already wanting to shave everyone's head as I just don't know how to get rid of them.

Two year old has curly mixed race hair, and has come home from nursery scratching her head (we had an email from the manager of a nits outbreak a couple of weeks ago, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised). A quick rummage through her hair and OMG! I'm so freaked out by the sheer amount of eggs, along with the live ones. I purchased 'Full marks' yesterday and used this on her which seems to have eradicated the live ones, and have bought a Nitty Gritty comb today and removed as many eggs as I possibly could, but this was not an easy job given her age and hair type so I definitely haven't got them all out. I'm now doing the treatment on myself as my head itches like mad and I think I can see eggs.

Please reassure me that there is an end in sight! How do I get rid of these pesky critters? The treatment says to repeat in 7 days if needs be, but surely any eggs I've not managed to remove are just going to keep hatching and relaying even more eggs? Does anything effectively kill the eggs? HELP before I honestly just go for the clippers and shave both of our heads!

You need to think about the life cycle of a nit. You retreat in 7 days as all the remaining eggs will have hatched by then but won't be mature enough to lay any eggs yet. Breaking the cycle.

You can also get Hedrin once which kills nits and eggs.

Hedrin once has always worked for us, although it’s messy. Repeat a week later to be sure you’ve killed all the blighters.

Thank you, this has immediately reassured me to know any hatched lice won't be laying eggs before retreating! Sigh of relief

When my DC had nits, we used the chemical treatment first.
And then additionally, we washed the hair every night, for everyone, put a load of conditioner in it, and did a thorough comb through with the Nitty Gritty comb. Generally we’d be getting less eggs etc each time we did a comb through. We kept up with the Nitty Gritty comb throughs until we’d had a week or so without spotting any new eggs / lice.
Plus we did the second chemical treatment a week after the first as advised on the packaging.

It was all very time consuming, but it worked.

We use hedrin once and a nitty gritty comb - which I sometimes use with loads of conditioner to comb through and get the worst out then hedrin and leave it, then nitty gritty to comb through again.

we never had it with dd1 but dd3 had it lots - a parent of a dc in her class felt nits were normal and didn’t believe in using chemicals so we had them all through primary 🙄😩

Hi we had these so bad last summer it was awful. My youngest kept catching them from school and then i got them as well.
Lots of combing with nitty gritty and I found NitWits worked best for us.

I agree I put conditioner on first just cheap tea tree stuff and section the hair and use nitty gritty comb as this removes a fair amount before you start.
I then use Hedrin once leave on 15 mins stuff then I comb it out then rinse it and then shampo and condition and comb again otherwise the headrin stuff is really greasy.

I wash and condition every other night then repeat the treatment usually it's ok but it is a nuisance

Nitty Gritty comb and loads of conditioner every 2-3 days for 3 weeks got rid of the lot of them.

We had them during the World Cup. I'd comb non stop all through the first half of a game, then rinse at half time.

Thank you all for your replies, this has been much more concise than my Google research. So I'm not going into this naive, realistically how long is start to end likely to take?

MKe sure you wash all bedding and towels too; online I read it wasn’t necessary but I always have and things like coats too. Plus hairbrushes

Another vote for Nitwits, easy to spray on, leave for 20 minutes and simply wash out. Don't even have to comb if you don't want to. My kids seemed to have head lice every year of Primary school and this was by far the best and easiest product.

You'll be done by next weekend if you re-do the chemical treatment and do a few thorough comb throughs with conditioner in between.

Buy some tea tree oil - about £3 and spay her hair with it every morning - the smell wears off quickly.

Re treat in 7 days and wash all bedding towels etc

Comb every day or every two days with cheap conditioner - lots of it in the bath and repeat.

Thank you!

Click the pic - clearly states tea tree oil kills lice

As others have said, a drop or two of tea tree oil in spray on conditioner will help keep them at bay.

periodically I do a thick coat of conditioner and a nitty gritty comb through just to catch anything early. Once you get over the initial shock you will become an expert!

Nitty gritty comb and once you’ve got rid buy this for next time Nitwits

The life cycle is 3 weeks so even if you treat again after 7 days you might not get them all. I'd comb every few days into the 3rd week to make sure you get any stragglers

Yes from everyone's responses I think your last sentence is so very true unfortunately!

my sister and I are mixed and when I was in primary school I caught nits quite a lot… we both have different hair types so our hair was treated very differently however I’m not sure what hair type your daughter has but my sister had type 4 hair, as soon as it was washed she needed product put in it to keep it manageable and products stifle nits and they cannot survive in hair with products so she never got nits once in her life.

I have type 3 hair and I could just shampoo, condition, rinse and go as a child.. no need for any added moisturiser or products which means my hair was ideal for nits. As soon as I caught them my mum would have to use some kind of nit treatment with the nit comb and pain stakingly comb out each and every section of my hair (they will run from one side to another) and keep rinsing that off in the sink. After that she would get a tea tree solution which I remember use to be left in the sink with hot water as it was solid in the bottle and had to go liquid again before smothering my hair with it.

I was the only one in the house with my hair type without any products in it so the only one to ever catch nits every time it came around but the whole thing became such a routine it was a joke! I don’t remember having to do more than one treatment cycle at the time but do remember the constant use of tea tree oil which always done the job after the one nit treatment.

if your little one is like my sister and had thicker more 4C hair then it’s worth using products in her hair to prevent her even catching them in the first place. It’s the only thing that differentiated me from my sister when these outbreaks happened.

Thank you this is really interesting and helpful. She has type 3 hair however, up until recently I was doing her hair every morning with products. I stopped because someone told me I was overdoing her hair but interesting that now I've stopped the products in her hair she has gotten nits. Definitely going back to the products!

I put tea tree oil in my own hair but oh my goodness it made my hair look so greasy! I had to use washing up liquid to remove it as my normal shampoo couldn't cut through the oil. What was I doing wrong? (I used pure tea tree oil which came in a small bottle, and used maybe 6-8 drops).

@thattravelphotographer my hair doesn’t handle oil too well either, it’s too heavy for my hair so it doesn’t even allow it to curl properly however I have become sensitive to everything in the last year so had no choice but to use coconut oil or jojoba oil and just deal with it because I’m yet to find a product I don’t react to now! Clarifying shampoo is what removed the excess oils from your hair that you add in, but be warned it cannot be used like normal shampoo (as in as often) as it literally strips all the oils including natural ones from your hair/scalp. I never used that as a child so not sure if there is a child friendly version but there must be. I have heard things like cornflower in the hair to soak up the excess oil before regular washes also does the trick but I haven’t tried it as it sounds messy!

but yes the lice need hair with absolutely nothing in it to be able to hold onto hair strands, breath and breed normally. Without that they will jump on, notice they cannot thrive there and jump off (kind of like fleas when it comes to humans).

continue with the hair products, you know your little ones hair and how it responds and don’t let others tell you how to do it unless of course it’s dripping wet and over saturated.

Heck my sister was able to put royal crown grease in her hair and if I tried to put that in mine my hair would be stuck to my scalp and I’m not sure how much clarifying shampoo I’d need to sort that if it would even work (it’s like using Vaseline!)

Agree with PP about type 4 hair and use of hair products. I'm white and grew up in south Chicago around the 10 years when the population demographic completely shifted.

Head lice letters home all but stopped when the school became mostly black. White kids did get lice (there was one large family and a handful of preschoolers by the end) but there weren't enough of us to spread it and as I was in the older years then, it was not an issue.

Our school was preschool to 8th grade (age 14) so a long time in one place seeing this unfold. I've always believed it was because head lice was a white kid problem because my friends never had to worry about them.

I am in the UK now and live in fear of head lice. I know it will come for me from my toddler, and had nightmares about them. I will have my first head lice in my 40s!

Use. The. Product. Again.

@PlainJanePerfect hahaha 😂😂 that was funny! Never thought I’d hear that you thought it was a white kid problem coming from a white woman.. you usually hear “sounds like white people problems” but never from actual white people so that was hilarious!

I don’t blame you though, on observation it does seem to be like that but then I remember when it came out that “nits only like “clean” hair” and so the association was that white people’s hair was clean and black peoples hair was dirty which is why black people couldn't get them. I can see now it’s down to being uneducated and still being in the time of racism but when you actually look into it further it’s nothing like that!

also hun just because your white doesn’t mean you or your toddler has to deal with with at all! You can and should still put products in your hair, it just means it has to be much lighter as your hair is a lot sleeker so won’t hold on to it as well but concentrate on the scalp and it will naturally fall down to the strands.

black people have also had lice when they tried to keep their hair natural with absolutely nothing in it (which must be hard to manage tbh) but I know of white people using say olive oil in their hair and never having to deal with them either.

Tea tree oil is used in many products now so you don’t need to use just plain heavy oil which my hair cannot even take, but you can use it mixed into leave in conditioners, mousse, hairspray and similar. The idea is to just keep the hair and scalp moisturised which might take a few products to find the right ones for you but there for sure are products around for type 1&2 hair also (even if it’s just to promote growth or moisture or something silly you don’t need!)

don’t fear them also, they are nasty critters and make your skin crawl and give you psychological itching 😂 but they are quite easy to deal with and prevent.. I will do some searches on products you guys can use as it’s not as helpless as it sounds.