7 Things You Don't Have to Do When Your Kid Has Lice

Not only am I the editor of our latest story on lice, which does a great job of outlining all of your possible treatment options, I'm also the proud mother of two little girls who've been infested. The first time, the call from the  school nurse downright paralyzed me. Stunned, I told my coworkers, who were all sympathetic either because they'd been in my shoes themselves or because they hadn't and live in fear of the concept. Then I sort of wandered around the office aimlessly, quite frankly dreading going home. The second time, I found the buggers myself and was more aggravated than panicked. I called Sally Kelly, R.N., the amazing professional nitpicker and school nurse who helped me the first time, and simply resigned myself to several days of laundering and combing. She's so wonderful not only because she can do a comb-out like nobody's business (and for a much lower price than her competitors), but because she's filled with helpful tips on the things that aren't necessary when your kid has lice. Thanks to Sally, I've learned what you don't have to do.

1. You don't have to freak out. 

   Of course you don't want bugs living in your kid's hair. But technically, from a health perspective, it's not worrisome. Lice don't spread disease. As Sally told me during our first call, "This is a nuisance. Nothing more." You lice vets out there know: Your first instinct is to wash or toss everything your child has ever come in contact with. But that's overkill. (The CDC backs this up--they point out that because lice can't live off the human head for more than two days max, "you do not need to spend a lot of time or money on housecleaning activities.") Speaking of...

2. There's no need to wash your child's bedding every day. 

   Wash the pillowcase, but the comforter/blanket, sheets, and stuffed animals and other lovies can simply go in the dryer on high for 20 minutes. As for the bottom sheet, you don't even need to remove it from the bed. Sally's tip is to take a roller lint brush--the kind with tape--and run it thoroughly over the top half of your child's sheet. Her logic: The odds of a louse or nit falling off your child's hair and getting under the pillow and remaining alive is remote.

3. Don't bother with the dust ruffle. 

   Lice won't be able to scoot all the way down past the mattress without dying, and your kid's head doesn't come in contact with it anyway.

4. You can skip vacuuming curtains and drapes. 

   Unless your child was, say, playing Hide & Seek and wrapped herself in the curtain in the 48 hours prior to you discovering she had lice, there's just no way that the bugs made their way over to your windows. Spare yourself. But you should vacuum any cloth furniture that your child's head may have touched in the two days before you realized she had lice.

5. You don't need to throw out your brushes and combs. 

   I drop my girls' brushes in a pot of boiling water immediately after I use them, turn off the water, and fish them out after a few minutes, by which time any bugs that were there are long dead.

6. You don't have to treat family members who don't have lice. 

   Once everybody has been thoroughly checked and you've determined who is and who isn't infested, just make sure that there's no head-to-head contact between the two groups. (No snuggling, sadly; no hunching side-by-side over a video screen--or Rainbow Loom kit, and so on.)

7. Hard as it may be, you really don't have to make your kid feel like she's a leper. 

   I distinctly remember one night when I'd finished the hours-long comb-out session with my girls and gotten them both bathed and brushed; I then went downstairs to wash their towels and boil their brushes. I came back up to my bedroom to find one daughter sprawled out on my bed. "OH MY GOD, GET OFF!" I shrieked, nearly causing her to have a heart attack. I immediately apologized, but the poor kid was wide-eyed, saying, "Mommy! You scared me!" Not to mention I made her feel as though she was repulsive. I quickly got a grip... and stripped my bed.

Whoa: Now There’s a Way to Track Head Lice Outbreaks in Your Area!

Find out in real time where head lice are 8 havoc and if you should check your kids ASAP.

I'll never forget seeing a tiny bug in my daughter's hair one evening after a bath and thinking, "Ew, it's a gnat!" Um, then I saw another "gnat." And another. My heart sank, as the realization that I was looking at head lice hit me. Oh, did I mention all three of my girls ended up with it? Let's just say it was not a fun week.

Later, I would learn our school district was being hit especially hard by an infestation of head lice. If only I'd known ahead of time lice was running rampant in our area, I might have been more on top of checking my kids' hair.

Well, now there is a way to track lice's whereabouts. One of the over-the-counter head lice treatment brands, recently launched an online tracker that allows parents and school administrators to see where outbreaks are happening so they can be prepared. Using IRI data from lice product sales and crowdsourced data from school nurses and parents (you can even report a "sighting!"), and Google Trends data to track lice outbreaks, the Lice Tracker shows in real time where those pesky buggers are wreaking havoc.

I decided to try it out and was relieved to see the incidence level is low in my area at this time. But, according to a study by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the peak time for head lice to hit hard is in August and September when kids go back to school.

First, what should we be looking for? "Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether you are seeing lice or just some other scalp condition like dandruff, or even sand," Dr. Altmann says. "Adult lice are usually light brown in color and look like sesame seeds. They often move quickly and can be found on the scalp or hair. Eggs are yellow, brown, or tan. They look like tiny seeds that are firmly attached to the hair shaft and do not move."

Dr. Altmann suggests dividing hair into small sections to search for lice and their nits, or eggs. This can be pretty challenging with thick, long hair like my daughter has, and may take a while. But trust me, you'd rather catch lice early before it spreads to other members of the family. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Altmann, it's pretty darn near impossible to prevent your child from getting lice because it spreads easily in schools and daycares. But, she recommends taking these preventative measures:

• Teach your children not to share hats, hair accessories, combs, or other items that come into contact with hair. Discourage your children from sharing or stacking blankets, jackets, pillows, and towels, because lice can crawl from item to item.

• Check your children regularly for lice if there is an outbreak at their school, even if they aren't showing any signs or symptoms (like, itching and irritability) and especially if there is an outbreak in school or in the region.

• If you suspect your child has lice, make sure to wash all clothing, linens, and toys used by the infected person in hot water or through dry cleaning.

If your child ultimately gets lice, Dr. Altmann advises parents to act quickly to kill the lice, remove the nits, and stop the problem from spreading. 

P.S. Don't feel bad if your child gets it! When it happened to us, I didn't want to tell anyone due to shame, but guess what? As soon as I shared my experience, I found out almost everyone I know has had either a scare or their own encounter with the pests!

Listerine Lice Treatment: Why It Doesn't Work

The Rundown

First of all, don’t use Listerine as a treatment for lice. Just don’t. It may be an appealing alternative due to its price when compared to the price of lice shampoos and treatments, but that’s because it’s not a lice shampoo.

To be classified as a lice treatment, products must go through extensive testing by the FDA and other regulatory agencies, submitted in clinical trials, and proven to be consistently effective. Listerine has not done that. It is a mouthwash, not a lice shampoo.

The Ingredients

Listerine
Active Ingredients: Alcohol (30%)
Other ingredients: Eucalyptol, Thymol, Menthol, Methyl Salicylate

Suffocation vs. Dehydration

The reason Listerine doesn’t work to eliminate lice is that different chemicals treat lice differently. The active ingredient in Listerine is alcohol, and alcohol-based alternative lice treatments (like Listerine) predominantly rely on suffocation to eliminate lice. This is a good step, but far from an effective, permanent solution.

Head lice in the egg stage have a protective, waxy coating that acts as a waterproofing agent and allows them to continue their evolution into live nits. (While Listerine may loosen some of the eggs, it’s not enough.) The alcohol in Listerine deprives the eggs of oxygen in order to suffocate them; however, it can take 8-24 hours for suffocation to occur. In that time, the lice eggs can lie dormant and the Listerine wears off. As a result, the affected party will need almost constant Listerine treatments over the course of several days to ensure the lice eggs don’t hatch. In addition, any live nits and eggs will still have to be combed out with a special lice comb.

Method

Why, then, do some people swear by Listerine? The secret may be more in the act than in the ingredients. Many articles that identify this particular method as a solution also call for the use of a lice comb and vinegar. It is more likely the act of combing out the lice with a lice comb, combined with the vinegar, that eliminates the lice more than the active ingredients in Listerine themselves.

Remember those breakfast cereal commercials on Saturday mornings for Apple Jacks that said “part of this complete breakfast,” then showed the sugary cereal alongside four apples, three bananas, two eggs, and a grapefruit? You got the feeling the cereal wasn’t really the main contributor to the “complete” part of the meal.

When it comes to lice treatment, Listerine is much the same as Apple Jacks. It may work as “part of the complete breakfast,” but it is not the key ingredient, or even beneficial to the lice treatment diet. In much the same way the fruit and veggies end up doing most of the work to make up the complete breakfast for the sugary cereal, the lice comb bears the bulk of the responsibility for delivering results on behalf of the Listerine.

Do head lice change color?

According to the research of R. Hoeppli, ancient Chinese medicine used lice to cure “high fever and severe headaches as if the skull is cracking.” A paste made from 300 – 500 black lice, spread on the head, was said to do the trick. I must admit, I’d rather have 500 pureed lice on my head than 500 live ones, but the question this raised for me was where one would find black lice. Is there such a thing?

Head lice that I’ve seen have ranged from pale ivory through a golden – sometimes reddish – brown; magnified, they are transparent. Lice that have fed have a black mass inside – presumably blood in the process of being digested – but are not, themselves, black. There is a colour range, to be sure. But black? A literature search turned up some interesting things:

• Head lice may have a natural way of blending in without actually changing color. Ibarra and Hall wrote: “Eggs and lice are well camouflaged, reflecting the colour of their surroundings.”

• Newly hatched lice that have not fed are transparent (Meinking) and do not have color until after they’ve fed.

• Color that matches the background has been shown to have evolved in other species of lice. This, however, refers to colour change over generations, not within the life span of a single organism.

The ‘wisdom’ that human head lice change color depending on the hair color of the host is oft repeated on websites and in non-academic publications. Published scientific information to back it up, however, appears nonexistent. Similarly, parasitology texts and laboratory identification references do not mention it

I remain highly skeptical that our head lice can change color within one generation, or that black head lice actually exist. I conclude that the Chinese remedy called for human head lice that had fed and had blood in their guts..

Head Lice Prevention – is it even possible?

When we provide lice removal services in a family’s home, the nice lice experts at Larger Than Lice are always asked “How can we prevent this from happening again?”

We wish there was an easy answer.  Or at least an answer that would guarantee a person would never have to have the head lice experience again.

But the fact is that head lice are an incredibly common infliction and no-one is immune!   Lice can happen to anyone at any time, regardless of hair type, hair color, gender or household income. Lice are common in schools, in daycares, in camps – pretty well anywhere kids (or adults) gather.

How is Head Lice Spread?

Head lice spreads by direct head-to-head contact with someone who has a case. The louse crawls along the hair and simply crawls onto another person’s head via a strand of hair.  Nits, or lice eggs cannot be spread from head-to-head.  Eggs are laid on the hair shaft with a cement-like glue which keeps them securely on the hair until the bug hatches from the egg.

Head lice spread within families, especially if parents and children lie down together, sit closely or sleep together. Lice spreads easily in schools as well because young children typically have close contact with one another, either with desks set side-by-side or during normal play and school activities. Though head lice do not hop, jump, or fly, they do crawl very quickly.

A secondary way of contracting lice is through an object which could have a live bug on it. Items like hairbrushes, hair accessories, helmets, headwear and scarves should not be shared.  It’s even possible for a louse to be left behind on a movie theatre chair or train seat headrest.  Note that this is NOT the typical way to contract lice, but it is possible.

Being in the same room or taking place in an activity in which someone has a case of head lice does NOT mean you will catch a case.  There must be direct head-to-head contact with the infected head.   Activities like sleepovers are an example of where children might have this kind of direct head-to-head contact over a period of time, exposing them to the possibility of contracting head lice.

How to Prevent Head Lice

It’s not an option to home-school every child or put them in quarantine, keeping them from everyday social activities.

But there are a few methods of prevention that might reduce the risk.

Keep long hair tied up in ponytails or even better, braids or a bun. Use tea tree oil or Buzz Off Lice Repellent Hair Spray either by adding a few drops to your regular shampoo, or by making a spritz by adding a few drops to water in a spray bottle. Tea tree oil can be very drying, so only use a few drops (as directed).

• Take a peek once a week. Catch head lice early and it is easier to remove.
• Educate your kids what to do to avoid getting lice and of the symptoms like scratching.
• Don’t share hair items and visually check head rests before laying or placing your head on them.

Parents should be alert to the common sign of head lice – scratching the head.  Watch for children who are scratching or who might even wake up in the night saying that their head is itchy.  Pay attention to kids who are visiting and watch to see if they are scratching their scalps as this could indicate a case of lice.

1. Once a Week, Take a Peek

Regular checking can identify a new case early. If a case is caught early enough, the life cycle of the louse can be interrupted. No further eggs will be laid and a case can be eradicated in just a few days. The best way to screen for head lice is to lather the hair with conditioner and thoroughly comb the hair out with a head lice removal comb (Professional Lice & Nit Terminator Comb), wiping the comb on a white paper towel after a few passes. Inspect the paper towel looking for brownish-colored eggs or actual bugs.

If checking for head lice visually, be sure to use direct sunlight or a very good table lamp. Carefully inspect the hair paying particular attention to the area when the hair shaft meets the scalp.  Look around the ear, nape of the neck and especially the crown of the head, as these are common areas for lice to be found.

When checking for head lice, look for lice eggs attached securely to the hair close to the scalp. Viable eggs will be brownish in color and cannot be flicked off the hair. They have to be removed between the fingernails, with tweezers, or with a good nit comb. Though head lice move very quickly, you may see an actual bug. Lice are the size of sesame seeds and are brownish-gray to caramel in color. They are see-through and can appear to take on the color of the hair.

Preventing Lice in the Community

It takes a community to prevent head lice. Advocating for regular lice screening in the school can go a long way to preventing a head lice outbreak. If children are regularly screened, cases might be identified and therefore treated before they have a chance to spread.

Professional screening staff from Larger Than Lice can provide screening services in schools, daycares and camps. For as little as $3 per head, each child can be checked for lice. School volunteers can also be trained to identify lice so that regular screenings can easily be scheduled.

Stop the Stigma

If you or a family member does contract head lice, don’t panic. This very common condition has nothing to do with cleanliness and it can be treated without the use of pesticides. Millions of North Americans have a head lice experience every year. A whole range of treatments is available and head lice removal services also exist in many communities nationwide.