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 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. 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!!

 

[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

Me

DD

DS

Two Precious Kitty Cats

All Star Movies May '08

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.

(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 ******** 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.

 

[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.