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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

how does your school deal with head lice???

49 replies

pinknfluffy29 · 14/10/2006 22:25

hello all
if i am to get one more "a child in this class has head lice please check your own child" i will scream!!!!
we are having one a week at the moment and my son seems to come home with them once a month.
this means spending a fortune treating everyone and putting undue chemicals on my child's head. when the child who isnt being treated reinfects everyone else!!!!

i am a parent governor and at the next meeting i want to bring up this subject but need some ideas on how other schools deal with it. a school i used to govern at had the same policy for head lice as they did for any other "contagious" ailment - send child home until treated. and not one parent was offended and there was rarely a breakout!!!!

thanks for your help!!!!

OP posts:

twelveyeargap · 16/10/2006 15:05

Oh man. 5 girls to comb. Poor you. I presume you've had lots of conversations with the older ones about not leaning in to whisper things etc. I became an awful nazi about it, and that was with only one girl! Actually, my husband ended up buying my daughter an ipod nano in exchange for her cutting her hair to shoulder length to make the process easier.

Incidentally, I can see how hairnets could make it worse... Hairnet falls off, kids mess with hairnet, hairnet goes on someone else's head... You know what I mean!

stleger · 16/10/2006 15:58

Two of my kids attended a very twee school in New England for a term. DD's class was called Bear Country. The class motto was 'In Bear Country we share everything except hats!'

HallgerdaLongcloak · 17/10/2006 08:06

joelallie, I think giving the children more ownership of the problem might be a good way forward. I had initially thought the national bug-busting day coinciding with Hallowe'en (see my earlier link) was a pretty daft idea, but perhaps the scariness of magnified insects could be exploited.

I wasn't arguing for the school to take responsibility for checking every child's hair (unless they bring back nit nurses), more that they should be allowed to tell parents and insist they treat the problem in cases of obvious infestation, say if a louse dropped off a child on to a reading book. Treatment is a fairly quick job (5 mins washing hair, 10 minutes conditioner, 5 combing, 10 mins allowing hair to dry) so I don't think a lot of education need be missed.

A bit of a cheeky question, this, but I'd love to know - have those of you saying we can live with this problem actually had the misfortune to catch the blighters yourselves?

When I was at primary school, there was a nit nurse but she never found anything. "Biddies" were mythical beasts of playground folklore. Something has gone badly wrong since then.

juuule · 17/10/2006 10:27

IME treatment is not a fairly quick job. The ten minute treatments are useless on the lice that my children have had. Even the stronger chemicals (malathion) that have to be left on over night have had only limited effect. Fortunately we have recently found that Delacet is more effective than most and can be used regularly (no chemicals). However, it's messy, needs to be left on a minimum of 2-3hours and is expensive (especially if used regularly for several children). So we still have to comb and comb and comb...........

HallgerdaLongcloak · 17/10/2006 10:39

My argument is not that one ten-minute treatment with ordinary conditioner and wet combing would necessarily get rid of all the lice including eggs in one go, but that it should remove the "crawlers" and so make it possible for the treated child to return to school without too much risk of giving lice to the rest of the class.

joelallie · 17/10/2006 11:08

juule - I found that delacet didn't work at all. Sad because it didn't require combing through. Hedrin is the only thing that seems to work apart from wet-combing of course but with 3 kids that is really not a practical option as regularly as you need to do it.

hallgerda - I think a nit nurse would be a great idea. Getting rid of the live ones - and doing it to ALL the kids to remove the stigma. I don't care what they do as long as they aren't excluded from school. And yes, I've had them many times - every time I've been to the hairdressers in the last 2 years I've got her to check my hair before cutting a single hair - I have this terror of being thrown out of the hairdresser with half a hair cut!! They don't seem to thrive in my hair as much as in my DD's and DS#2's thankfully.

joelallie · 17/10/2006 11:10

Have to say that the idea of frightening the kids with big photos lice doesn't work here. My children are fascinated by them and DS#2 gets quite upset when I kill them.

juuule · 17/10/2006 11:18

Seems like you have to find the treatment that works on your own particular louse. We have also used Hedrin and it is very effective (and gives lovely shiny easy-to-brush hair. It is more expensive than Delacet,though, which we found just as effective. I agree that scary magnified louse pictures don't seem to bother the kids.

HallgerdaLongcloak · 17/10/2006 14:19

pinknfluffy, have you explored the teachers/teaching unions angle on this issue? It strikes me that it must be a health and safety at work issue for teachers.

drosophila · 17/10/2006 20:11

DS's teacher told a friend of mine that there is one child in her class that has headlice so bad they are falling our of her head onto her work. The parents never treat the child in anyway and said child goes on reinfecting all her classmates.

Isn't it neglect if a parent does not treat a child ever? Constant infection can lead to poor health (that's where the term 'lousy' come from) and I think in extreme cases like this the parent should be spoken to directly either by social services or the school.

Pinkchampagne · 17/10/2006 20:15

Our school just send a headlice awareness letter, with a note at the top saying "There has been a case of headlice reported in your childs class, please check your childs hair tonight!"
We are not allowed to single the children out or send them home. I think the parents of the affected child are made aware though.

SecondhandRose · 17/10/2006 20:29

You can get head lice treatment from your GP for free on prescription for the children.

I have found that even after treating you must keep checking morning and evening for some time afterwards.

A friend suggested putting drops of tea tree oil into my daughters shampoo and conditioner and we have started doing that tonight.

singersgirl · 17/10/2006 20:36

We get a letter from the school that says something like "Parents in (insert year) have asked me to remind you to check your children's head for lice regularly". Checked my boys last week - fine. Checked DS2 this evening - AAAAGH! So we have conditioned with tea tree oil, combed for 20 minutes and will get chemicals tomorrow. DS1 looks clear so far - he is very blond so very easy to see in his hair. I've been scratching non-stop.

Good to see all your hints.

Surfermummystomb · 17/10/2006 20:48

Dsd has had headlice for 8 years . I have spent hours in the shower with her combing them out, the last time she was here there were literally hundreds of the things. But even if we treat her and clear her, she goes home and gets reinfested from her siblings (not dh's).

DH even got up at 3am the night before our wedding to comb her out as she couldn't sleep as she was scratching so much, and she's had time off school with it because she scratched and the bites got infected. It's been impossible for dh to discuss it with her mum, she'll either shrug her shoulders and say "so what all kids get nits" or slams the door in his face/hangs up the phone. Nowadays he can at least discuss it with her, but she says that dsd won't have a bath or let her do it.

She was at her best when she was at a school where they had to tie their hair back. She doesn't normally like having that done as she says the other children see the eggs in her hair and take the mickey.

It breaks my heart for dsd and I'm totally fed up with having to comb myself and dd out just because her mum can't sort it out. And dd hasn't even started school yet.

I should have parped .

grumpyfrumpy · 17/10/2006 20:58

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HallgerdaLongcloak · 17/10/2006 21:22

Sounds like a good scheme, grumpyfrumpy. Is a FLO just a nit nurse or does she/he have other functions too?

grumpyfrumpy · 18/10/2006 08:02

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HallgerdaLongcloak · 18/10/2006 08:28

Ah, so a FLO is similar to a Learning Mentor. (I thought the powers that be had decided Norah was too common a name...). If you don't mind us asking, which LEA are you in, grumpyfrumpy? Slight thread hijack, but to what extent does she help with secondary school applications? I wonder whether someone at DS2 and DS3's primary school could do more, as there's always someone who messes up, doesn't get the form in etc., and whose child ends up in a mess as a consequence.

Original poster

pinknfluffy29 · 18/10/2006 12:22

it just gets better!!! my sons class had a HV come into today - each child was sat down with a comb and a paper bowl and the children were taught how to comb their hair to spot lice (excellentinvole the kids and make them aware so they ca nag parents!!!) but the kids who had nits were found out by the whole class and so had a day of "i'm not coming near you" which i find a little to close to bullying!!! i really dont want my son to be one of these who picks on another for having lice so how do we win!!!

it is the same two children who have it and my son has said the little girl is absolutely infested with them, surely the school must be able to help this poor thing out when her parents are obviously not bothered!!!!!!

OP posts:

HallgerdaLongcloak · 18/10/2006 13:51

pinknfluffy, the lice and the bullying are separate issues. You just need to tell your son that lice aren't a reason to be nasty to anyone (and I'm sure you do that ) Maybe some good will come of it - the parents may listen to their child telling them they've been ostracised over the lice and that may finally spur them to take some action.

admylin · 18/10/2006 19:54

We are looking forward to returning to the UK in the near future but this nit problem in British schools is really a worry. I have never heard of so many cases of children with nits here in Germany and if one is infested she/he has to go home straight away and can only return to school when a doctor has certified them as nit-free, all parents of that class also get a letter to check their own kids and if they find anything then they also have to stay home.
It just doesn't seem to fit with all the extremely strong health and safety regulations in the UK. So why is the nit nurse not about anymore? what happened to change all that and why has it become what seems like an epidemic? (Sorry but I left the UK in the late 80's so I've missed out on some things!)

grumpyfrumpy · 19/10/2006 09:51

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HallgerdaLongcloak · 19/10/2006 09:57

Thank you for that information, grumpyfrumpy. Your FLO sounds wonderful.

Original poster

pinknfluffy29 · 20/10/2006 09:30

have found that the nitty gritty comb can be prescribed by doctor and health visitor so i am going to get a letter drawn up to give to parents informing them that they can get the comb free.

OP posts:

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