We had a battle with head lice earlier last year. Lice treatment is hell. For the sake of someone’s privacy I’m going to skip the identifying details. But I will say this: there was a lot of hair, a lot of scratching, and a lot of heartache and a lot of my leaping to pick off imaginary fluffs of this person’s head LONG AFTER the lice population was decimated. Adult lice look like tiny seeds with feet. As for the babies? You’ll need a magnifying glass for those.
Speaking now as someone who’s gone through it, I realize it would have been more helpful to educate myself before I got The Call … instead of late nights doing panicky googling when I should have been in bed.
I didn’t know what to look for before I got The Call. Now I do. So if you are a parent with kids who have hair who might come in contact with other kids who have hair, listen up.
Start here: this article sums the experience up pretty well.
My best tips (which doesn’t get mentioned in the article above) are to :
1) Ditch the lice comb that comes with the chemical treatment and get a good flea comb from your local pet store. Save your child thousands of dollars in therapy and don’t tell them you’re using a flea comb. Flea combs are wider, and their longer handle makes it easier to use than the wee lice combs. They’re awkward. And they gave me finger cramps. The flea comb is ideal for the daily lice checks you’re going to need to do for the next few weeks. Or more. Gah!
2) Buy a pile of fun books or comics for the person scheduled for daily delousing. Having the kid with head bent down in reading position was easier to than having a kid-with-head-up-in-TV-watching position. The process will take take a couple of hours every day, or more, depending on how much hair we’re talking about.
3) Use hair cutting scissors to snip out the lice eggs rather than pulling them out. The eggs aren’t just loosely laid in the hair, oh no, the lice use a sticky substance to glue each egg to a single strand of hair. They’re not that simple to dislodge. You will need to use the tight “clasp-and-slide” pinching motion with to get it out. I was constantly afraid that I’d dislodge it with my fingers only to lose it further down in the hair. After HOURS spent doing this – and pulling hair in the process – I discovered that cutting the egg out was much easier. I used the scissors to snip the one strand of hair, egg attached, and tossed it aside. Note: I did this outdoors, not indoors. You’ll need a good light for this.
We still do regular head checks, and we’ll do them more often now that the girls are back in school. I’ll also be spraying their noggins every once in awhile with a tea tree oil solution. Apparently the little buggers hate the smell of the stuff.
Good riddance lice! I hope I never see you again.
