Help! Lice!

[disnut1149]

Hi
My DGD(4) and DD have lice. My DGD goes to day care and my DD is a K through 2nd grade teacher. They used Rid shampoo for the first treatment and my DGD had another shampoo tonight. My DD found 4 more lice! Yuck!! She's been vacuuming and changing sheets and pillow cases everyday. Also putting blankets and pillows in the hot dryer. How do you finally get rid of these things. I've also combed through my DD's hair every couple days with the gel and my DD did my DGD's. It's so much work and seems never ending. Any suggestions will really help. Thanks!!

[SueM in MN]

Here is a very good website:
http://www.headlice.org/

[CastleCreations]

What about stuffed animals? I would bag up any kind of furry toys....just a thought...

[Janet Hill]

My daughter (7) had lice this year YUCK!

After treating with Rid (2x)and not being completely rid of them, I refused to put this pesticide on her hair again.

I slathered her hair with mayonaise and wrapped it with plastic wrap (suffocates them). After washing out the mayonaise, I put white vinegar on her hair, left that on for about 30 minutes (dissolves the sticky stuff that bonds the nits to the hair). Washed her hair out

For a few week after that I washed and conditioned her hair with tea tree oil products.

I swear those things have built up a resistance to RID. Read the ingrediants. It's a pesticide. I felt like I was treating my kid with a can of Raid, and I am very far from being an organic type mother.

[bellesnow]

I just went through 2 months of this with DD who has long thick hair. She got reinfested twice:mad: and after the second I called her dr.. She said use cetaphil cream not lotion in the jar every night and let her sleep in it and rinse it with Dawn dish washing soap in the morning for 3 weeks. I found the jars of cream at Sam's Club cheaper. I know it sounds extreme but it worked.:goodvibes I've tried 2 treatments of Nix and Mayo treatments twice and neither of them killed the bugs. Sometimes when the strand of bugs are already treated with the medicine the become immune. I also have a friends who had this problem with her son and she used Skin So Soft by Avon. She left it in his hair for a couple of hours and then used the Nit comb and combed everything out. She was finised with it that day. I was washing bedding and vacuumed her mattress everday and washed her pillows. She never used anything twice. I'm sorry your family is going through this. It is a very stressfull thing to go through. Take care.:)

[stacy2197]

Off topic a little but I went to my kids concert tonight and there was a girl with a shaves head. I thought the poor thing had cancer or somthing and I hadn't hear about it. I asked the kids when it was over. She had lice and the father didn't know what else to do. Good luck with the treatments.

[Lorix2]

We had them for almost 2 months because I refused to use the pesticides on ourselves. I used mayo, vinegar, bagging our hair to suffocate them and nothing worked.

The trick is to "nit" pick continuously as much you can and look for them. I did that for a couple of hours thru out the day.

The KEY is to get the little baby lice that are the size of a pin head and darker in color and until I realized that, I was just picking off the adult lice and they just kept multiplying. You know where there is an adult lice, there are many babies from them.

My suggestion is to have them sit under very bright lights and you'll definitely notice the little ones easier and once you get rid of them, you'll be rid of them for good.

[Suzanna1973]

My DS had a go round with lice this year at school. We tried everything.....rid, mayo, nothing was working.


Finally I bought one of the big light magnifier like the school nurse has. It was only $15 at Office Max. I was able to see his head up close and personal!!!

I put his stuffed animals is a ziploc big bag for two weeks. I bought him new pillows. I used Rid Spray on everything in the house that could not be put in the washing machine. Wash everything your child touched with hot water. Her towels, her sheets, the clothes she wore a few days before she was diagnosed.

We looked on the internet and found that if you mix medicated dog shampoo with baby shampoo, it will help kill the lice.

Due to the fact that my son kept getting lice from school, he is using this shampoo twice a week until school is out!

Also, using a blow dryer everyday will help prevent lice. It seems they can't take the heat!

Good luck!

[GoofyBaseballMom26]

We looked on the internet and found that if you mix medicated dog shampoo with baby shampoo, it will help kill the lice.

Due to the fact that my son kept getting lice from school, he is using this shampoo twice a week until school is out!



Is it flea shampoo for dogs? My vet told me to quit using that on my dogs. Said it was not good for people to come in contact with the stuff in it??? Might want to double check before using that again.

But then again... lice.... enough said. I would probably use about anything to get rid of them.

[SueM in MN]

Is it flea shampoo for dogs? My vet told me to quit using that on my dogs. Said it was not good for people to come in contact with the stuff in it??? Might want to double check before using that again.

But then again... lice.... enough said. I would probably use about anything to get rid of them.
That is insecticide for fleas and ticks. It is not meant for humans.
Even the head lice shampoos say not to use them more than every 7-10 days (they are insecticides too) and can be toxic.

[2Kds2K9]

We've gone though this also. Several girls in my DD's class had them and we figured out that the girls were "sharing" them in the coat closet. Once we all did the whole routine at home, we made sure the school treated the coat closet.

The horrible part was the school nurse. She really embarrased my DD with the whole thing. They should learn to be much more sensitive.

Good luck.

[disnut1149]

Thanks for all your replies. You guys are great. My DD also bagged all the stuffed animals. I think she's been doing a lot of the things you suggested. We did hear about the mayo and also olive oil to suffocate them, but haven't tried it yet. My DD is divorced, so I'm always there helping her. My DD hair is long and curly, and it takes me about 2 hours to comb it out with the gel. It's so time consuming. Thanks again for your help!!:goodvibes

[Suzanna1973]

Our school nurse was blaming all of the parents of my son's classroom. Their are 16 kids in his class and 11 were sent home with headlice. Tell me that didn't come from the classroom!!!!!

All of the parents went together and demanded that the room be fumigated and sanitized. It's amazing how no one else in our families got head lice!!

[SueM in MN]

All of the parents went together and demanded that the room be fumigated and sanitized. It's amazing how no one else in our families got head lice!!


DH:darth:

Me:maleficen

DD:tinker:

DS:stitch:

Two Precious Kitty Cats:ccat: :ccat:

All Star Movies May '08pooh: :eeyore:
I was a public Health Nurse who was a consultant to schools (in another lifetime). It's too bad the people at your child's school are not sensitive (and probably not educated) about head lice. The website that I posted in my first post started out as an organization of school/public health nurses trying to share factual information.

"Fumigating" the classroom won't do any good and will be exposing the kids to more toxic chemicals. You don't have to worry about slick surfaces like the desks, tile floors and things like that. Head lice have legs with claws that are meant for grabbing onto surfaces that have some texture (like hair). They move very poorly on hard surfaces (sort of like humans on ice) and don't jump, hop or fly. They get from place to place by someone actually having contact with the place they are (which could be another child's head or something that came into contact with a child's head).

Head lice also need to feed on blood at least every 24 hours, so it's not likely that lice would be surviving over the weekend at school. But, they could survive overnight and on Mondays, the kids who still had live lice would be there again. It's important to know how lice are spread in order to get a handle on them in the school. Unfortunately, a lot of people dealing with them in schools aren't really looking at it that way.

What they need to do in the classroom is look at soft surfaces that the kids might be sharing. Things I found in classrooms that the teachers didn't think about:
reading corners with large lounging pillows and a rug. Several kids would be there at a time for a reward; when they left, several more would come. That's a perfect place to spread head lice.
headphones
dress up clothes or anything like a "head of the line hat" or cloth banner that a different child might wear every day
gym or recess equipment that is made of cloth or used on the head (things like batting helmets, vests, etc)
times and places where 2 kids will have their heads very close together like if they are both looking at the same thing together
places where one child's coat, hat or backpack touches another. Sometimes each child has a hook, but once the stuff is on the hooks, everything touches.
Another thing I've seen happen is the kids wear their coats outside for recess, but as they get hot, the coats come off and are all piled on each other.
A simple way to avoid that is to give every child a bag to put their things in. They put their stuff in their own bag and then hang the bag on the hook. If they are outside and take the coats off, they need to be separated.
kids sharing things, for example
- Mary and Susy are outside at recess. Mary is hot and Susy is cold, so Susy lends Mary her coat.
- Tom has a new cap with his favorite team on. He shares it with his best friend to wear for the day.
- Betsy admires Tammy's hair ribbon, so Tammy lends it to her.
Schools tend to get squemish about head lice and blame the 'victims'. They should be educating the kids about lice, that there is no shame in having them. I did a class and showed a picture of seveal adults with many kids in a classroom and then asked the kids who in that picture could NOT get head lice. The answer was the man - because he was bald. The kids need to know that anyone who has hair could get head lice. And they need to know what to do to protect themselves.
But, some schools wouldn't do the common sense things to prevent transmission, like putting kids things into bags, because it looked 'bad'. Many were willing to fumigate, which really does no good because it looked like they were doing something, but they were not willing to look at things that made more sense in terms of transmission.

:grouphug: (but from a distance)

[2Kds2K9]

Thanks for the great info!

Yes, the schools need to look at how these little buggers get from one child to another. What was so interesting when we had it go through was that the school nurse AND principal both stated that the girls got them from a Girl Scout gathering. Yes, all the girls affected are Girl Scouts, but they are all in different troops and had not been together for weeks! The mothers deduced that the place of contact was the coat closet. All kids with last names lettered A-L shared a closet. Hmm, all girls with last names in that group had lice! Doesn't take a rocket scientist.

The other disturbing part was the school nurse. She had all the kids line up in her room and checked them all. Being 4th graders, they all had an idea of what was happening. When she was done, she called out the names of several girls and sent the rest back to class. Okay, so now the entire class knows these girls have lice. What could be worse for a 10YO girl. I was called in and had to treat her before I could send her back to school. What a horrible bus ride my DD had the next day. Luckily, the teasing did not last long.

Now that my DD is older, and getting ready to experience the joys of womanhood, if you get my drift, she has questioned what to do if she get "it" at school. When I told her to go to the school nurse, she just looked at me and said "No way! She'll embarass me!" My DD now goes to school prepared so she doesn't have to see the nurse for "that".

Sorry to go off topic. Just hope that the schools can become more sensitive to these issues.

Leigh

[SueM in MN]

The other disturbing part was the school nurse. She had all the kids line up in her room and checked them all. Being 4th graders, they all had an idea of what was happening. When she was done, she called out the names of several girls and sent the rest back to class. Okay, so now the entire class knows these girls have lice. What could be worse for a 10YO girl. I was called in and had to treat her before I could send her back to school. What a horrible bus ride my DD had the next day. Luckily, the teasing did not last long.
That's especially sad to me.
I became a nurse partly from a bad experience with a school nurse. She was doing vision screening and I couldn't even see the big letter. Being a kid, before that, I thought everyone saw things the same way I did. I had no idea that other people saw differently than I did until we all were lined up to read the eye chart that day. The nurse was VERY nasty and I cried. First she said I was misbehaving for not cooperating and then she asked me if I was stupid - LOUDLY, in front of all the other kids. Then she called my mom and said the same things to her (she actually said "I think your DD must be retarded because she could not read the letters from the chart." My mom told her that she did not appreciate the nurse talking about me like that because I was a second grader reading at an 8 grade level, so I was definately not stupid. Anyway, I was so angry at that nurse and vowed then to do my own part to make sure no other kids were treated like that (I even wrote a leter to the nurse).

Anyway, when my secretary and I would do head lice check, the first thing we did was try to find out who was likely to have it. We would talk to our first case about how head lice spread and then ask who their best friends were, who they shared a locker desk with, etc. We explained that because lice move between people who are close to each other, the people they were close with might also have lice. We emphasized that it didn't matter who had it first or who gave it to who - we just wanted to make sure it stopped because it was no fun for anyone to have head lice. Then, we would bring the kids we needed to check into our area in small groups, did some quick education and then took them one by one to check. As private as we could be. If we found any head lice, we would catch a louse if we could on a piece of tape and tape it to an index card along with a hair with a nit on it. Most of the kids were actually fascinated with that and wanted to see it. It also gave the parents an example of what they were up against.
We usually did not do whole classroom checks, even though that was what the teachers wanted. We did that at first, but found that the kids we found with head lice were usually the ones who were best friends, sleepovers or shared something with our first case. Doing classroom checks wasted a lot of time checking kids who were not actually exposed and often missed those who were exposed, so we stopped doing that and got very scientific on who was likely to have been exposed.

[Dead-metal]

Ok, so it's all very well treating our children for headlice, but unfortunately if other parents do nothing then what can we do?

My DD has headlice (for seemingly the 100th time!!!) I alternate between wet combing, tea tree, Derbac, and anything else that works. I get rid of the headlice; she's clear for a couple of weeks; and then it all starts again. I don't have any trouble at all getting rid of them but they keep coming back!!! All the treatments are pointless if there is a child in the school whose parents do nothing. I'm SO frustrated by this, but there's nothing I can do.

DD's class teacher knows which child it is but she is powerless to do anything except tell the child's parents that there is a problem. The fact that they do nothing is their business.

Pretty much the only time my daughter is free from lice for more than a couple of weeks is the 6 week summer holiday. Interestingly enough, DS has never had headlice.

[SueM in MN]

Ok, so it's all very well treating our children for headlice, but unfortunately if other parents do nothing then what can we do?
DD's class teacher knows which child it is but she is powerless to do anything except tell the child's parents that there is a problem. The fact that they do nothing is their business.
There are some things the school can do, but some school don't want to do anything.
One thing they can do is recheck kids and send them home if they are found to still have nits. Some schools don't do that for just nits, but they need to for live lice. After a number of times coming to get the child, most parents do something. As a last resort, they could report the parent for neglecting a health problem.

You can make sure your DD undersands what she can do to prevent head lice - not let her head come in contact with anyone else's, not share combs, brushes, clothing, etc. Also, insist that she be allowed to keep her coat, hat backpack in a plastic bag (even if the school says it's not necessary). My sister did when her DD got head lice again and the school would not do anything (it was a parochial school and they even found some education to send home that showed the cartoon head lice getting married before they produced any baby head lice). She also kept her DD's hair in braids so it was 'contained".
Will doing those things positively protect your child? Maybe not, but it will lower the chance of her getting it again.

[mommiepoppins]

The child was at my house and sent home from school and thats how I found out. Mother did treatment..next day child was at my house and sent to school and child had to be picked up from school again. mean while tis kid was laying on my couches and sticking her head in my lr curtins. so I vacumed again for the 5 thtime in 2 days. Set all of my day care childrens hat and coat buckets on the front porch. Loaded my kids and my self with hair spay and moose. :scared1:

[tinkerbell615]

I really feel your pain. Several years ago my DD had a terrible bout with these nasty little things. She has a head full of wavy hair and it took us hours and hours to go through her hair. I went through it every day for weeks because once we got rid of them, I was afraid I missed something and she would get them back. She did get them back and I was "sick". At that time we actually cut her hair into a bob just to make it easier to go through. Her neck has never been the same since she had to let me twist and bend her head for hours to look.

I highly recommend the olive oil or mayo treatment. The one thing that I do suggest though... is putting a shower cap on her head, covering her pillow with a towel and let her sleep with the cap on. It is quite messy but it smothers any live bugs. The key then is to make sure you go through the hair repeatedly to get any nits before they "hatch". My daughter slept in olive oil every other day for about 6 days. That way if we missed anything and it did hatch it would be smothered soon thereafter.

Good Luck. My DD and myself are so afraid of this happening again that she will not even mention the words h__d l__e.

[disnut1149]

Hi
I'm just checking back and thanks again for all your suggestions and reports about your experiences with lice. Hopefully we can get this under control. I think doing this much wash everyday is my DD's new career!!:goodvibes

[*KeepMovingForward*]

Hi
I'm just checking back and thanks again for all your suggestions and reports about your experiences with lice. Hopefully we can get this under control. I think doing this much wash everyday is my DD's new career!!:goodvibes

I feel for you (and your water bill from all that laundry). DD brought home headlice after a visit with her cousins a few years ago. I didn't realize where they came from at the time, but boy was it a pain in the butt. We tried the Rid and Nix shampoos to no avail, mayo, vinegar and any other home remedy I could find on the net. I think as someone else said, you just have to take the hard route and literally nit pick every day. DD had very long hair and it was terribly time consuming. Just when I would think I was done, I'd see yet another nit appear on her hair! Ugh! We bagged all her stuffed animals and "babies" and put them in the garage for a few weeks, washed everything in sight, sprayed and vacuumed her mattress...it gave me enough house work for a week-it was like Spring Cleaning! In the end, we finally got rid of them with a lot of tiring persistence (me sitting there every night in front of the tv picking and coming through her hair). Months later my SIL said DD mentioned she had lice and she wanted to apologize to me because it was DN that probably gave them to her! GRRRRRRRR! The urge to kill my SIL crossed my mind (okay, not literally, but you know...) :sad2:

It is a shame that a lot of people think that head lice is due to poor hygiene. If that were the case, DD would never have gotten them. She showers twice a day. I am a compulsive cleaner. Anyone can get them. The school nurse that embarrassed someone else's child should be embarrassed HERSELF. Very sad. The physical part of lice is one thing, but let me tell you, DD has never quite gotten over the psychological part of it. She was embarrassed, humiliated and freaked to be in her own skin. To this day she still checks her scalp and hair in the magnifying mirror each day. When she started puberty, she nearly had a nervous breakdown when she started getting dandruff. She thought it was the lice coming back. The doctor assured her it was not lice, but merely dandruff caused by her hormones revving up. People, especially those in the medical field and school personnel, really ought to be a little more sensitive.

Good luck to you, DD and DGD. It takes a while, but hopefully with time and patience you can be rid of the problem once and for all. Good luck. :flower3:

[ameraumi]

While I have never dealt with Lice (*knock on wood*), I have read that mayo, olive oil and tea tree oil is the best natural remedy.

I also attended a workshop for daycare providers that discussed illnesses, and Lice was one of the topics. We were told that bagging the items for 2 weeks is overkill. Lice cannot live more then 24 hours off of the human host. So bagging the items for 2 days is more then enough. I have also read this online as well.

[TheDizMom]

Here is a very good website:
http://www.headlice.org/

Hey SueM I am from the Minneapolis area too. We live in Wayzata, where are you? If you don't mind me asking? I certainly understand if you don't want to put it on here.

[PA Princess]

We had a bout with head lice this last fall with dd6...awful little buggers. She got the lice from a neighbor girl who came over to play (her mom never mentioned the lice - sheesh)...being little girls they naturally played dress up. When we found the "bugs" in dd's hair, she said, "Oh my friend said she had bugs in her hair." What????? Grrrr!

We were fortunate in that we did not have a reoccurence after initial bout, but I combed and combed and combed dd to within an inch of her life, and we did treat everyone on the house just to be safe.

Best advice I have is to buy a good lice comb (I bought one on line)...it is SO much better than what comes in the kits or any regular comb...it really makes a huge, huge difference! We used cheapy hair conditioner and just combed every day over every inch of her head for a week until not one nit was found (and probably a day or two extra for good measure...then we went to every other day).

Like, I said, we did not have a reoccurence and no one else (4 kids and 3 adults in our house) had an issue despite extreme close contact with dd. Hope you are free of these things asap!

[DisneyMomx7]

I totally sympathize. This happened to us about a year and half ago. I was so freaked out. Luckily they caught it really early. School nurse said one dd had 1 nit, the other had 2 nits, and ds had none.

Even though I am an obsessive compulsive cleaner (and also have cleaning people) and the kids shower and shampoo every day I felt like dirty trash. Our school nurse was really nice though and said its usually the clean kids who catch the lice!

I used Nix and it definitely worked. I did overkill and bagged all the stuffed animals and things for a month. I bought a metal comb and combed the girls hair out with every night for a month. I washed sheets, towles, and bedspread in hot water (each twice). I vaccummed and re-vacummed every inch of our house and upholstery. I sprayed everything (even the car upholstery and booster seats). I felt like I didn't sleep for a week. I also started making the girls wear their hair in braids, buns or pony tails (and still do) and spraying their hair lightly with AG hair spray every morning (another school nurse tip).

We were lucky and just had the one spell, no re-infestations. Good luck to you.

[PaMom001]

Here are two threads that have cropped up before:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=943373 and here: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1316998

Now, I'm itchy.

[wen774]

This makes me so glad to see this thread...just knowing that I am not alone in this. My daughter brought home lice this past december, and it took us until april to finally get rid of it. I tried all the chemical...all the homemade treatments...and it just kept coming back. I had to cut my daughters waist length hair short and shave my sons head because i finally couldnt take the 6 hours of combing that it took each time. Near the end, the word lice would have me near tears(and im not the crying type). In the end, the only thing that really worked was combing and picking.

I have heard that there is an electronic comb that zaps the lice. Its supposed to be really effective. Too bad I didnt hear about it til we got rid of it.

[Liltx]

My 3 yo got them from her cousins. By the time I noticed she was infested. Nix does not work. We got a prescription from our dr. but I would probably not use that again since it is so toxic but it does kill the lice and eggs so if you have been battling them for months I would consider it. WE had only had them for a couple of days but she did have the reistant kind. I did nit pick her hair still for 3 days. Our dr. said to skip the spraying of everything and just wash the linens and vaccum.

I have also heard that dying your hair works so adults might just try that.

Monica

[disnut1149]

Hi Everyone,
I'm checking back again. I just got home from a trip to Las Vegas, my DH had a conference out there, and my DGD looks as though she is doing much better with the lice, but my DD seems to still have them. She shampooed her hair again with Rid. I haven't had a chance yet to talk to her in more detail about it, but will later today when she gets home from school. (She teaches).
Thanks again for all your replies. It helps to know that the attack on lice can eventually be won!!:goodvibes

[sskem96]

My dd#2 had them about this time last year. We bagged up all the pillows and stuffed animals in black garbage bags and left them tied up for 1 month. Bagging for 2 days will kill the adults, but there could be eggs on the items that won't hatch for several more days. We washed bedding daily. I sprayed the couch, chairs, matresses, and car upholstery daily with lice spray (Walmart brand). We sprayed the inside of her softball helmet before and after each use. We used the lice shampoo on days 1, 5 and 10. I didn't have any luck with the comb that comes with the shampoo. We had to go through her whole head (a 2 hour process) and pull out every hair with a nit on it. We stuck them to a big piece of tape so they wouldn't end up on the floor and hatching later. She hated doing that, but we did it twice a day for the whole 10 days. Very time consuming, but we never got reinfested. You have to be very vigilant. Think about anything her hair may come in contact with. Do you have upholstered DR chairs? Don't forget the car! And no going to the movies because she could pass them on sitting in those chairs. Even if your daughter is doing her daughter's hair daily, she needs someone to do her own. The shampoo does work, but only on the live bugs. The nits could hatch any time producing more live bugs. You have to manually pick out every hair with a nit on it, that is the key.

[4eyedbuzzard]

Went through it twice when the kids were in elementary school. The knit combs do work, but you have to spend about two hours plus going through the entire head of hair in very thin small layers. Some of the smaller nits have to be picked/scraped off by hand - fingernails work. We used the shampoo at 5 day intervals for about 3 weeks, washed and dried all the bedding and clothes, etc. Big PIA.

Never knew where the term "nit-picking" originated from. Found out the hard way.

[disnut1149]

Thanks again everyone. My DD thinks that my DGD is rid of the lice, but I will check my DD's hair. She thinks that she doesn't have them any longer. I hope she's right.

[kathfish]

As a mother of four, the oldest 16, the youngest 4, I shall say, with all certainty, THE TOO SHALL PASS.
:)


Do what's recommended, knowing that YOU don't want them either.

Then, get ready to do it again.

It's a fact of life, ya gotta deal and ya gotta deal calm and strong.