Head Lice Scare – Welcome to the neighborhood!

With the best of intentions, I set out in our new neighborhood, and I found the park and met the parents of a few lovely suburban children I hoped my kids would become friends with. I was especially successful at matchmaking my five-year-old son with a lovely little six-year-old girl with green eyes and a gracious manner, who enveloped my shy boy in her warm, ceaseless chatter. Her hair was gorgeous—long and curly, just the color of rain-soaked wheat that smells so good after a storm. I made a remark to her mother about her beautiful hair, and her mom shuddered as she dropped this bombshell on me.
“I was afraid we were going to have to cut it all off. She got head lice last week.”

I reacted as any mother would. I cringed and made an instinctive grab for my son, fighting back the urge to snatch him away from the infected one and run immediately to the nearest decontamination facility to have his scalp treated with radiation and chemicals to prevent the spread of the dreaded (disease?) pest to the rest of the family. Not to mention what his father would say if I sent him back with a head full of critters!

With a nervous laugh, I asked, “Oh? Head lice, did you say? Oh my, that must have been terrible. What did you treat it with?” And did you get rid of it before she wrapped her sweet little arms around my boy and gave him such a great big hug?

The good news is, head lice treatment has come a long way since I was a kid (and the better news is, my son apparently escaped contamination). I remember when the only treatment option was Qwell, which was rumored to cause seizures if you left it on your hair too long—and what squeamish mother didn’t leave it on just a little bit longer than the instructions said, just to be sure?

Turns out, pesticide shampoos are not the only means of treating head lice. In fact, chemical treatment shampoos should be a last resort. Over-use of these products have produced strains of head lice that are resistant to them and much harder to kill. Even if you do use one of these to treat your child’s lice, it won’t do the trick by itself.

If your child gets head lice, take consolation from the fact that clean heads are more likely than dirty ones to catch them. Lice eggs attach easier to clean hair than to dirty hair. The only absolutely effective way to get rid of head lice is to comb out all the eggs. Even if you use a lice-killing shampoo to kill the live bugs, you will continue to have head lice unless you remove each and every egg from the child's hair. They say those special lice combs work quite well. They’re just regular combs with teeny-tiny gaps between the teeth so that individual hair strands pass through the gap, allowing the comb’s teeth to grab the lice egg and pull it off the hair shaft.

The most commonly recommended way of treating head lice is to use a gel egg-remover product, which is nontoxic and not a harsh chemical like the pesticide shampoo, and then use a lice comb throughout the hair. The egg remover gel makes the hair easier to comb through and makes the eggs detach from the hair shaft better.

During a “lice scare,” such as when lice has been found at school or when a sibling or friend has been infested, braid the hair and/or use hairspray to make your child’s hair less a

ppetizing to the nasty little critters. Make sure your child understands that he or she must not share hairbrushes, hair accessories, or clothing with other children. This includes coats!

The most important thing of all is to be honest. If you discover head lice on your child, notify the school and the other parent. This can be an incredibly embarrassing phone call to make, but it is absolutely essential. It is critical for your child’s other family members to undergo treatment or precautions, and the school has to be able to notify other parents.

If your child does get head lice, be sure to check all other family members, including adults. It is better to be safe than sorry!