Headlice (merged)

missjennipenni

My girls kept catching them from the school, I used many treatments, none killed them all! So then i used headrin, and it actually worked. I also invested in a Nitty Gritty comb, as it has special teeth to get rid of all the eggs as well as lice. We have had no lice in our house for 8 months now!

Spendless

I agree with post above about nitty gritty. Our school won't take kids back until the eggs have been treated, and though any over the counter solution worked on ds it didn't on dd, and we went thru a month of hell before I ordered nitty gritty from recommendations I'd seen on mse. The comb is wonderful, the lotion found 2 lice that I'd missed with conditioner the day before (and they weren't newly hatched ones) and the repellant spray has kept them away ever since. Have you tried it arthur dent?

Loopy_Lobes

Poor kid, I bet everyone knows she's got nits, they can be easy to spot if there's a lot of them, how awful for her.

My daughter has had head lice loads but not for a while now as she's 10 and I think she's getting past the age where she hugs her friends all the time. I would wet comb her hair with conditioner once a week as standard and on the occasions when she had lice I would do it every three days - this is essential as you can only comb the lice out, not the eggs, so you need to repeat every three days to catch the lice as they are hatching. I would also do my hair as a precaution and wash bedding, towels and cushion cases.

As a preventative measure you can put some lavendar oil or tea tree oil (or a mix of both) into a spray bottle and fill with water, around 10 drops of essentail oil with 100ml of water is fine. Mist the hair with this each morning before school and it repels lice as they hate the smell. Also discourage your child from getting too close to others and make sure girls keep their hair tied up if it's long, preferably in plaits.

Loopy x

arthur_dent_2

No, where do I get one from, somewhere like Boots.

Spendless

arthur_dent wrote: »

No, where do I get one from, somewhere like Boots.

I ordered it on-line and it came following day as long as you order by 4pm (I had minutes to spare before dead-line so service is very good). This was 2 years ago. Not sure if it's available in shops, though comb might be. The lotion, comb, and repellant spray was expensive to buy around £30ish IIRC, but worth every penny, and I'd wasted a lot more on treatments that didn't work. I'd had enough of the critters after a month, goodness knows how you feel after 2 years.

arthur_dent_2

It has driven me bonkers, the first time they got them we went to the health visitor and got some stuff on prescription, shouldn't have bothered. We then tried allmost every off the counter remedy possible and still they come back. We did use Hedrin and it wotked but back to school and back to nits. This last time we used Hedrin and so far everyone except DD2 has remained nit free, I have just combed them again in the last few minutes and didn't find any so hopefully another dose of Hedrin should just about finish them off.

FairyElephant_2

A few years back we took stepkids on hols. I saw some fall off SD's head onto the table! We didn't even know she had them..... When asked she said her mum knew (never said a word to us) and had 'given her some shampoo to use a couple of weeks ago' - she was about 11 at the time and had really long hair.

DH, his mum & dad & I were all shocked that the ex hadn't told us, and that she hadn't got a nit comb or anything, or treated the child herself.

I couldn't get a nit comb where we were on hols, but got a flea comb from a pet shop and got some conditioner to which I added tea-tree and lavendar oils. Put on really thickly and left for 20 mins, then I combed through - there were hundreds of them - poor kid! We did it again a couple of days later and only found a few, and by the time she went home she was free of them.

I gave the conditioner mix to everyone else on the holiday, and the use of the flea comb just in case!

A couple of years later I caught them from the younger SS - it was horrible! I used the same mixture and got rid of them. Also I mixed some of the oils into a leave-in conditioner, which seemed to keep them away afterwards.

ATB.

FE

aligerdie

When DD1 got head lice I just could not get rid of them...

in the end I bought one those battery combs already mentioned, and that was brilliant. It has an electric current going across the teeth (perfectly safe!) and zaps the little monsters when they touch it. It makes a whistling sound as you do it, then when it catches one it goes all funny and sounds like when the flies go into those blue lights in shops!!!

definitely comes with my recommendation.

Gingham_Ribbon

MRSTITTLEMOUSE wrote: »

She says that this is the only way she can ensure she does'nt end up getting infested as they are just so common nowadays.

What I feel really sad about is that I asked why we don't have a nurse checking children's heads in school any more and I was told by management that they don't do this because they believe it's against the children's human rights. But no-one seems to care about their human right not to have parasites living on them.

The most they did was send children home when they were clearly infested. The next school I worked in didn't do anything at all. One girl had children refusing to sit next to her because everyone could see them crawling on her. Maybe a return of the nit nurse would help prevent children having to live like that for years on end.

aliasojo

Thanks everyone. :T

Was at Boots for them opening this morning to get one of those nitty gritty jobs...scary looking thing, lol.

Daughter's hair has been combed 3 times wet and twice dry since last night and found things each time. :lipsrseal The last time we combed for at least half an hour and found only one thing that looked like it might have been an egg but that was it so hopefully we caught it early and got shot of all of them but time will tell. Obviously we will still be combing regularly.

Tried to phone daughter's friend's Dad but they must have been out all day and the longer it is before I get him, the more worried I get about saying anything. :rolleyes:

I'm positive she's covered in them as I found the pyjamas that my daughter had lent her, in the bathroom with lice on them too. I can't understand why she's not scratching like a lunatic though.