Treating nits with a smile

Treating nits is something

all parents dread at least

once in their child’s

schooling life.

Here we are, two days away from vacation’s end and suddenly I discover that my 7 year old daughter has nits! I needed to act on this fast…she is due back at school on Monday!

Personally, I have never had nits or head lice in my entire life and this has been the third or so outbreak for my daughter in the past two years. I am so sick of this problem….and a PROBLEM it is I can assure you.

The urgent need for treating nits never occurs

at a convenient time.

Treating nits is usually something that needs to be done right when you are in the middle of something important like doing taxes or painting the nursery in time for a new baby’s arrival. It just seems to pop up when you least expect it and it can be a major interruption to the harmony of your home.

Treating nits is better than treating hatched lice.

Nits are the eggs that attach to the hair shaft. Nits stay put….very well.

Lice are the hatched critters that emerge from the nit eggs. Lice move around.

Lice are tiny insects about the size of a sesame seed that cause the scalp to itch. They’re usually found on the crown, behind the ears and near the back of the neck so look there first.

Now, preventing nits is another story. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who once said that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” meaning that if something awful can be prevented with diligent and minimal effort it will save you a lot of cost, time, heartache and effort in the long run had you done nothing to prevent it in the first place.

Alas, this is perhaps where I went wrong this time. I’m thinking, “School summer holidays…the kids are not really around other kids…there won’t be ANY chance of nits or headlice while being away from school.” Therein lies the dilemma.

Complacency.

I admit it. I haven’t been checking for nits on a weekly basis like I am supposed to. School vacations are about late nights, pushing the snooze button and spending quality time with the kids. I guess the very idea of treating nits was bumped way down low on the to-do list.

Well, today I had my wake up call and it’s all hands on deck from this point on. I rushed off and bought some head lice treatment and a nit comb and some hair lacquer for daily preventative hair spraying. The pharmacist said that lice love clean hair so there’s no need to wash your child’s hair daily like I usually do. Apparently, the cleaner the hair, the easier it is for their eggs to attach and stick. When the hair is dirty it produces oils which make the eggs not attach so well. Made sense to me. She also recommended Neem oil but warned that it really really stinks so I thought I’d stick with the commercial brand of treatment.

Step one involves using a lotion or specially formulated shampoo to stun or kill any live lice in their tracks. It’s important to follow the directions as stated on the product.

Step two is all about removing the lice and their eggs with a fine tooth comb. It’s like looking for needles in a haystack that moves and twitches constantly!

Step three means cleaning your child’s bedding, towels, hair brush and hats. Remind them that hats are never to be shared at school.

Step four is for follow up. Repeat the shampoo and combing every 7 days until completely eradicated. You can use everyday hair conditioner for this. Use a lacquer spray on your child’s hair every morning to keep those whispy hairs close and neat. Lice tend to ‘trapeze’ from one child’s head to another so fly away hair needs to be tamed. Children love to hug and work closely with each other at school so try to discourage such proximity if at all possible.

Treating nits makes you feel empathetically itchy all over!

Three hours of plucking microscopic little eggs off my daughter’s head outside in the sunlight and you can imagine the kind of Saturday afternoon we had.

Sometimes it was fun as we sang songs, guessed the shapes of the clouds together or she read me stories from her book of Hans Christian Andersen classics. We’d stop every now and then to stretch our necks, change position or to have an ice cream or a dip into the nearby bag of M&M’s and then we’d get back into it, her sitting on a stool a bit lower than mine, her arms resting on my knees as I pulled, parted and plucked at her thick, long tresses. I even snipped some hair off a few times because….well, it was just getting ridiculous!

Thankfully there were no moving lice to be seen, just eggs that needed to be pulled off the hair shafts. Even so, I laundered all the sheets and towels and mattress protectors and hung them all out in the sunshine to dry, just for good measure.

Many tears and tired rants later I decided to call it a day. Plus it was getting dark. Time for a treat, so I took the kids to McDonald’s for dinner to turn their frowns upside down by way of a Happy Meal. Works every time.

Treating nits is like covering school books….get it all done in one session!

But remember the golden rule….check for nits on a regular basis and schedule yourselves to repeat the treatment with thorough combing once a week.