Head lice and angry 4.5 yo

[GingerHat]

DS is 4 (almost 5) and in reception. I noticed him scratching his head this morning so I ran a comb through and found a lot of head lice. Riddled would be an understatement. Cue checking my hair and DD's hair and we also have head lice but not to the same extent.

I bought combs and nitwits lotion in the summer as a precaution as DD's nursery had a case of lice. At the time I just combed and shampooed them and me but only found one or two big lice no eggs in DD, nothing for the rest of us, so I thought we got away with it then.

this morning I have used the nitwits on all of us and have combed through both of them. DD seems fine now but DS has loads of dead bugs and eggs in his hair. His hair is short but thick and I spent at least 30 mins combing through in front of tv with a promise of chocolate but he's been so emotional and angry with me. I have found so many eggs (over 30 at least) but I've given him a break as he was getting cross.

I gave him the chocolate but he was getting angrier and angrier about me using the nitty gritty comb and just threw the chocolate at me so I picked it up and threw the chocolate in the bin. I said I know you are angry but you don't throw things, especially not at people.

He's clearly not happy and he's tired but I don't know how else to get him to cooperate.

I feel like he gets angry with me a lot. I try and stay calm and set the boundary but with the lice I need to comb through. I hoping the nitwits will have at least killed the eggs but no doubt he'll go in and catch more on Monday.

any tips on how to get him to cooperate? I know the nitty gritty isn't the softest comb but it does seem to get all the eggs which the plastic one doesn't!

Also, DS has asked several times to shave his head. We haven't so far as his hair is so lovely but will this help get rid/keep the lice at bay?!

Yes shaving his head will help you get rid of the lice. It doesn’t have to be shaved down to nothing, you could buzz it down to an inch and it would help the comb go through more easily.
The shampoos are good at killing adult lice but eggs are really hard to kill. You need to keep combing everyone’s hair with the nitty gritty comb every day or two for the next couple of weeks.
Using piles of cheap go conditioner helps the comb slide through. You can’t use the insecticide shampoo more often than is indicated on the bottle.
Don’t worry about your son catching more lice at school. He might do, but the eggs already on his head will also probably hatch if you don’t comb them out. With an infestation like that your kid will have been spreading lice to other kids in his class so there’s no point getting angry at the other kids or their parents.
After you’ve got this infestation under control you need to keep using the comb every so often - once a week is good, to catch any lice before they have a chance to multiply to enormous numbers again.

I only have DDs but honestly if I’d had boys they would have had their hair as short as possible around that age because of the nits. The nit lotion is expensive, the combing is time consuming and not fun for anyone and there’ll never be a time when everyone your kids come into contact with are nit free so they’ll catch them again (and again…)

We managed to watch all the studio Ghibli films several times while nit combing, and to this day more than a decade later Totoro and the smell of nit lotion are inextricably linked in my mind!

@CaptainBarnaclesandthevegemals thank you. I'm definitely not angry with other kids/parents, sorry if this wasn't clear! Head lice are common at this age and I know he'll probably get them again. I just want to avoid aggravating him as much as possible and I don't want him to hate me for having to pin him down constantly! If a shaved head works then a shaved head it is!

@NoraLuka thanks for this, I'll think we'll try out all the Ghibli films too as he loves Totoro!