Conquering Lice One Nit At A Time

This blog is nothing if not a little bit of everything. . . 

As my little guy came up to me and gave me a big hug, I looked down at his blond head and did something that has become a bit of a habit lately:  I searched for lice.  I'm finally far enough removed from this experience to share it with you.  That doesn't meant I'm not still ever so slightly traumatized by what happened.

So, one morning at the beginning of the school year I was getting ready to send my kids off to the bus when my little guy complained that his scalp itched.  My first thought was that he didn't fully rinse out his shampoo.  I checked the nape of his neck where he was itching and couldn't believe what I saw.  It was bad.  BAD I tell you!  Really bad.  

We made it through 11 years of childhood socializing before the lice finally hitched a ride home.  It wasn't even my daughter's long blond hair that brought them home.  I'm picturing a group of 9 year old boys, heads stuck together over a pile of Legos.  Or putting each other into headlocks while wrestling on the carpet.  Getting them from someone else's hairbrush?  Definitely not what happened: my 9 year old doesn't even use his OWN brush.  Sweaty wrestling boys sounds highly likely.


Luckily we had one of these:

When the kids were in preschool in Italy, I read a notice on the door one day that mentioned "pidocchi" and was told I needed to go directly "la farmacia" and buy a special comb.  There were plenty of notices about lice in the years to come, but my kids never had any.  I guess when it rains, it pours.

Want to get rid of lice?  Then get a good quality metal lice comb and use it on EVERY STRAND OF HAIR.  My kids have a lot of hair.  That's a lot of combing.  But it is also THE BEST way to get rid of lice.  My daughter, with her piles of blond hair only had what may have been 3 nits (the eggs).  They are so small that sometime you wonder if it a speck of sand or a flake of dandruff.  The boy child was a different story altogether.  Really really bad.  All kinds of bad.  This was no minor infestation.  My head is suddenly so itchy as I write this!

I combed my son's hair over a large unfolded piece of newsprint so that I could easily dispose of anything that was removed.  Then I thoroughly washed his hair.  THEN I used a blow dryer in an effort to desiccated any nits or lice that had eluded my wrath.  Then I combed through his hair AGAIN!

Finally, I took him to school.  I dropped him off in class and then swung by the nurse's office to give her the option to send a note home to other parents. (When lice are found on kids at school, the nurse sends home a note informing parents that a student in your child's grade had lice so check your kids.)  I wasn't required to say anything but I felt that, because his infestation had been so bad (shudder), I should alert her.  Alas, no good deed goes undone.  She informed me that he could NOT return to school until he had received a chemical treatment to rid him of lice.  I told her that wasn't going to happen.  Under no circumstances was I "dipping" my child.  She wasn't pleased.  She said it was policy.  I said it was not going to happen.  She called my son into her office and threatened told me that if she found even one louse or nit he would have to go home immediately.   She got out her little wooden chopsticks and started searching his hair, determined to find something.  She couldn't find a thing.  Back to class he went.  Ah, sweet victory! 
  
Then I went home and really got to work making sure no stray lice or eggs were in the house.

• I machine washed and dried ALL the bedding, including mattress pads, in the house.  My daughter had what might have been a few nits and my son also makes the rounds snuggling in everyone's bed so I was taking no chances.  

• I tumbled all the stuffed animals on high heat in the dryer.

• I removed the blankets, pillows and fabric slip covers from the pillows and couches and into the wash they went.  The inserts that would fit got tumbled on heat in the dryer.

• I vacuumed everywhere.  I pulled my son's bunk bed from the corner and got every inch of carpet in his room.

• I put fresh bedding on all the beds.  

• I collected all the towels, dirty clothes and jackets and put them in the wash.

I admit to maybe going overboard.  For a week straight, I used a lice comb and a blow dryer on everyone's hair at least once a day.  I removed a few more nits but never saw another louse.  We didn't have a reinfestation issue from eggs that hatched.  I don't regret it but admit my vigilance was a bit excessive.  Extreme but certainly not crazy.  Crazy would have been using a bottle of chemical on my kid's head. Why, OH WHY would I feed my kids pesticide free food and then douse their heads in the stuff?  You know what works?  Lice combs.  That's why every box of chemical treatment comes with a comb and tells you to use it!  Oh, gracious, I seem to have climbed up onto a soapbox.  Down I come.