DS has come home from school crawling with lice

[ByPeach1]

DS9 has come home from boarding school with lots of lice. He boards during the week as part of a football programme so he hasn’t been home in 2 weeks and didn’t have them before. Does anyone know of a quick way to treat the lice? His hair is quite thick and just above shoulder length and I’m panicking as he has to go back on Monday 😫

I'd be complaining loudly to school. That's really poor on their part and there's no chance of the parents fixing it alone with boarders. They need to do a lot better and treat the boys at school.

All the chemicals!

I used to wash my children's hair in tea tree shampoo and they never got them.
So maybe try this after, also call the school as all the boys will need to be treated.

I always assumed boarding schools would share this kind of care rather than leave it all to parents in the small windows they have. Besides if the whole boarding house isn't treated, surely he'll get them back by Tuesday?

Lots of misguided comments expecting the school to act on this. That's not really how boarding schools work. The OP will be better off telling her son to step up and proactively treat his own lice, that is the more effective way to get this under control in the long run since there's a good chance it's going to be a recurring problem.

I caught head lice from a young relative before I had kids, it got really bad because I just didn't consider that might be what was making my head itch.

I did the nitty gritty and conditioner thing and it worked really well. No chemicals necessary

Me and exH caught lice a few times off various friends children before. We both have very thick waist length hair and have never needed more than one dose of hedrin and a good comb out to get rid of them. You won't need to cut his hair and it shouldn't take 5 days. We just left the stuff on our heads overnight.

@muggart This child is 9. How many 9 year olds do you know who could manage to effectively comb through their thick shoulder length hair, change and launder their bedding and keep repeating this, ensuring that their friends do the same to get the nit infestation under control?

I would absolutely expect school staff at boarding schools to be acting in loco pare its with everything that entails. I would also be expecting them to contact parents to inform them of the infestation, what they are doing to get on top of it and what parents need to do to carry this on while their children are at home. I find it negligent that this hasn’t happened and would be complaining very loudly if my child had come home in this state.

Hedrin once

I think I posted before - after washing, rinse his hair with a mix of water and vinegar, and then comb with nit comb. Vinegar dissolves the glue that attaches nits to the hair. Just make sure it does not get into his eyes.

Also helps is you put hair conditioner on his wet hair and comb it out really well.

Well that's a lovely outlook but realistically saying "i'm only 9" wont help him - the lice won't care about that and nor will the staff! it's boarding school not a luxury spa. The point of boarding school is that kids learn to look after themselves. Encouraging parents to rely on teachers for support in these situations, rather than equipping their children to help themselves, will backfire on the children.

In that case I hate the idea of young children being at boarding school even more than I already did. I certainly wouldn’t be expecting luxury spa treatment but I would expect a basic level of care to be provided as a minimum.

There is plenty of time for children to learn to look after themselves. This is a very specific skill set that I would not expect a 9 year old to have and most definitely would expect the adults who are paid to be looking after them to be helping out with.

I find it incredible that nothing had been done to start to tackle the issue and the child’s parent’s weren’t informed. It feels negligent.

He’s brought lice home from school so you need to treat his pillow, sheets, towels and clothes as potential egg harbourers.
Put EVERYTHING, including brushes, in a bin bag and freeze it for several days to kill off the live ones. Then wash at 90 degrees.

I learned that after the 3rd time of binning everything with DD. She caught nothing in Primary despite having long curly hair. In middle school they were hugging, putting their heads together, etc. It is a stigma to be the one that reports lice to the class but it turned out the ballet girls had brought them in…