Am sitting here after a nit free summer & so far, 3 weeks into term still nit free.  But why oh why do I know, sometime before half term I'm going to be torturing my kids (dh & myself too) with the so called unbreakable nit comb & hederin by the bucket load.

No one is allowed to check the kids heads (apart from the parents), no one can suggest a certain child might need a bucket load of hederin (or a shaved head I'm not fussy ;-))  Ambiguous letters get sent home from school (whether they make it home or not is another matter). 

Sorry just wanted a rant as I can't take it out on the school system apparently.  Have suggested that the school do a nit awareness week & get full use out of pester power to get parents to notice what's in their kids' hair.  Don't get me wrong, I'm no angel but a bit like the dogs, if I see someone scratching, then they're de-bugged (dd also gets the nit comb twice a week regardless of signs of itching, bless her)

Unfortunately its part of the politically correct mad world we live in. I can understand it makes you furious - the headlice treatment isnt cheap. It just seems to be one of those things that kids grow out of.

We used to have a nurse called Nitty Nora come into school and check all childrens' heads! :)

Progress is sometimes good - at other times, it's gone mad! :(

Some schools in my area have brought in a policy where children who have visible head lice are sent home immediately .
This makes the parents act as they don't want their little darlings at home  !

I know how you feel, same here, nit free summer but I will start my 2 times a week reigime of combing through hair whether they are scratching or not, just to stay on top of it. I still usually lose though.

Is it really that prevalent in schools now?  We used to have a nit nurse at school to check our hair, I was laways worried I'd catch them but never did! This post is making my head itch....

Head lice will always be a fact of life in school - got them as soon as I started school many many years ago - I forgot all about it until I started teaching myself and my mother reminded me.  My daughter had them several times too.  However these days there is the problem of the superlouse (scratch scratch) that becomes immune to the treatments.  It is all very well checking the children but the whole family has to be checked too and treated if necessary.  It only takes one family not to conform and that is it - constant reinfections! Don't know whether the nit nurse really made a difference but I do remember one in a small school taking a child out of the class after showing me how lousy he was and treating him there and then!  Can you imagine doing that to any child now!   My granddaughter has started school this week - thankfully my daughter cut her long tresses that tangled so easily. 

I have just had to de-head lice my two boys, not many just a couple, but why do they get them!!!

When I went to the chemist to get the solution I nearly asked for Frontline!!! lol I always regard head lice as human fleas!!! lol

There's a child at my boys' school who has head lice so badly infested that you can actually see them.  (Not in my boys class luckily).  Apparently, the childs mother has done all she can, and still the child has nits!!   The school can do nothing other than send the usual letter home informing all parents of an outbreak but unless the mother of that child does the treatment as well it all will be pointless.  I pity the poor child.

I wonder if nits/lice hate hair gel. :-D

In primary school I can remember getting the odd letter that someone in their class had hair lice so please check your child. Mine never seemed to catch any and I always used to say as a joke it must be the hair gel you guys wear. But......... perhaps it was?

>Mine never seemed to catch any and I always used to say as a joke it must be the hair gel you guys wear. But......... perhaps it was?

Am Positive it was :) :)
My kids used to get them, and then I started putting hair gel on them. Didnt have them after that :)
Lea :) :)

My boy has never had them either touch wood!!   I use the tea tree shampoo and conditioner from holland and barratt, the strong stuff, makes your eyes water a bit, but seems to keep the bugs away.

When my daughters were at school, they were always getting head lice. I would treat them, the following week they would have them again, I would treat them....it went on and on!. So much so, I didn't want to keep putting the lotions on their heads and I didn't want to cut their lovely long hair either! I discussed the options with them, namely, get your hair cut, stop lending/ borrowing brushes and hair bobbles etc, keep your hair tied back at all times, never put your head next to your friends etc. AND the best thing of all, that really worked, conditioner on their heads every night with a comb through with a nit comb - every single night.....they never had nits again!!!  I went through tons of conditioner though but it was so much kinder to their heads :) and I had to be very consistant and do it all the time ( I may have missed on the odd occasion :-D )

We had Nitty Nora come to visit when we were at school too :-D I think she came when we had our health checks and were all standing there in our vest and knickers!!!

Some schools in my area have brought in a policy where children who have visible head lice are sent home immediately .


oooh, what area (vaguely) do you live in?  My headteacher said it wasn't allowed, but if I can find an area that puts this into practice I may get somewhere.  Wouldn't mind but as the school's only got 45 kids in it would it be too much hardship to have a nit treating night for the whole school?  You can get hederin on prescription free so it's not as though it would cost parents anything.

My kids used to get them, and then I started putting hair gel on them. Didnt have them after that

What sort of hair gel, anything in particular?  Am now off to bulk buy hair gel ;-)  Kids have trea tree shampoo & conditioner to no effect but will try anything.

Oh & whoever said frontline wasn't far off, I was given quellada as a treatment for nits the first time around from the Drs (wondered why I recognised the name, used to use it on the dogs with sensitive skin!!!!)

Any Hair gel :)
I believe it suffocates the Nits as it blocks their breathing :)
I jut put a load on their hair :)Even the natural look ones work LOL
Lea :)

As a hairdresser a few tips to help  keep the Headlice at bay...

Hair gel or any waxy styling product...the nits cant grip the hair
Tea tree oil left on the hair ...they dont like the smell

Use a very fine tooth comb every day to comb your childs hail  thouroughly roots to tip, the finer the teeth the better,(although it will be slightly painful on long hair), as it breaks any live nits legs that may have climed onto the scalp and again they cant grip the hair to feed or breed and will die.

To remove the dead eggs after treatment smother the hair in conditioer and the eggs will comb out easily from root to tip

If your child is a girl and they have long hair, Plait it tightly for school as this makes it more difficult for the lice to find their way in and keep boys hair shorter,the less hair there is the harder it is for lice to grip *These 2 methods are not bullet proof but they will help to a degree*

Hope this helps.....

My mam was a school nurse and one of her jobs was as a "Nitty Nora" she had an awful time of it cos they werent by law allowed to touch a child if the child refused as the politically correct brigade decided if a child said no and you went ahead ...it was classed as abuse!!!! rediculous I know...but there you go.Also school cutbacks decided it cost too much to have a nit nurse so a combination of those 2 factors got rid of them.

She also came across the same problem as many of you have ,in that  the childs parents didnt want to know....She lost count of the number of times she went to the childs home with the bottles of lotion Free I might add, only to have doors slammed in her face and "My child aint got nits luv" or words to that effect shouted at her.......

Thanks for the advice, will def. use hairgel from now on in.  DD has tight plaits every day, DS has short hair, but I can't cut it too short as he's big for his age & looks thuggish with very short hair (he's only 4 bless him) 

When I went to the chemist to get the solution I nearly asked for Frontline!!! lol I always regard head lice as human fleas!!! lol
Actually someone at work told me the other day that peopel are actually using the frontline spray as a headlice treatment as it is really effective! Not legal as it is a pom but if they already have some for their dog i guess who is to stop them. Not sure i would want to be using it on children though!

Benzyl Benzoate is what we used to use!  I spoke to a Vet only last week who said he's put all the parents in his Granddaughter's class on to it! :)

Slightly off topic, but our daughter is in her last year at hairdressing college, over the past 2 years they have been told if a client comes in with 'visitors' as they call them, they have to have a quiet word with them ask them to go home, treat the problem and return when clear.  Yesterday my daughters next client was absolutely crawling with them, she spoke to her new tutor who told her she HAD to continue doing the clients hair.  I'm afraid my daughter wasn't having any of it and refused, she did get a telling off but to be honest, if I were in her shoes I would have refused too.

Well done to your daughter for sticking to her guns. That is disgusting!!!

When  my daughter was in year 6 I was called in to to see her teacher.
My daughter and two other rather fiesty young ladies had decided to take the matter into their own hands and had gone to the mother of the class nit carrier ( there was no mistaking who it was poor child you see the things), and suggested which shampoo to use and HOW to use it.
They made it very clear that they had had enough of it all !!!!!

I would like to say the teacher was genuine in her telling us off but I think she had her fingers crossed behind her back.

Problem was solved too.

I always put Tea Tree oil in the parting and a final  hair rinse in vinegar, old wives tail but we seldom had a problem.

Stormy good on your daughter too, has it put her off the job?

My daughter was plagued with head lice when she was younger for a whole year, again you know the culprit but never said anything.  Anyway, I used to literally douse her hair in conditioner, big cheap bottles, comb it through, douse it again and leave it on while she slept, this sorted it.  I was desperate to try anything and someone suggested this and although I didn't expect it to work it did!  Now whether this has contributed to her very shiny glossy hair now she is 14 I'm not sure but her hair is like glass some days and she models for a local salon but it was only ever the shops own conditioner I used.  I used loads once to get rid of em and left it in overnight with loads and then weekly as a preventative from then on.

As children everyone always said nits only like to go in clean hair. My mum made the mistake of telling me (obviously tongue in cheek) that it was a rumour made up to make the skanky kids with dirty hair and nits feel better. Of course i repeated it to the school playgorund. Think my mum could have murdered me :-)

do you have girls or boys? i had really long hair when at school so i used to get them alot. Id suggest french plaits if you have girls, hair isnt as free flowing dont know if it will work but worth a try.

I can remember my sister telling her girls they only got them because they were such friendly girls and that nits were shared between friends...lol.

As they got older they realised that that wasn't quite the truth..:)

When my daughter was at primary school she had nits for the best part of a year as did all the other kids -even the teacher had her hair cut short!

Me and all the other mums had tried just about every lotion on the market including tea tree and conditioner.  I then read in a magazine that nice n clear available from Boots would work and it did. It was a miracle worker and cleared the class.   I have recommended it several times since and its always worked.

It's so expensive though all this nit treatment isn't it?

We got nits during the summer   after 6 years of son being in school and nit free  

Where?

a certain expensive Cinema chain    cost 3 of us £19 to see Mama Mia, £5 for a box of popcorn £3 each for coke - the nits came free

I was seething!

Did some research on the net and found this  http://www.nittygritty.co.uk/ng/index.jsp?gclid=CM6luMfj95UCFRqH1QodgQrX3A

Seems expensive at £10 (from Boots) but will last a lifetime and the only other thing I needed was some cheap conditioner (Tesco Coconut - 49p/500mls :-D )  Nits and eggs were gone in one treatment and now we use it 2x a week - I'm itching just thinking about it :(

> certain expensive Cinema chain

Don't call them flea pits for nothing you know :-D  That's where I caught nits at 16.  Didn't catch them again until I caught them off my own daughter.  One daughter regularly caught them every other year because she was in a school that swapped classes about.  Every other year there was a girl in her class who would be running alive and no one was allowed to utter a word to her.  I think it's abuse to let a child be left untreated, lice are parasites after all.  In centuries past it was a recognised fact that having nits made you feel ill which is where the term "feeling lousy" comes from.

When my daughter was in Australia a couple of years ago she phoned me one time to tell me she wasn't feeling at all well but she didn't know what was wrong.  The topic of conversation changed and she told me how she had lots of insect bites that she thought she must have got one evening near a lagoon. I put 2 and 2 together and thought she might have had an allergic reaction to the bites and advised an urgent visit to a pharmacy.  The pharmacy took one look, asked where she was living, (local hostel) and told her they were bed bugs bites (now scratching as typing).  It was the bites that were making her feel ill.

I've been using a nitty gritty comb and tea tree conditioner on all the family since we had visitors a month ago, fingers crossed they've gone! I thought it was expensive too, but really does work. I couldn't use any chemical treatments on my 13 month old daughter as she has allergies so didn't want to risk a reaction, but with her hair already more than shoulder length we couldn't leave her untreated (especially as she was the one person we found said louse on!), she's quite happy to sit there while you comb through with conditioner, not so keen on the rinsing though. I was worried it would be painful for her cos its such a fine toothed comb (with swirly bits!) but it doesn't seem to cause her any discomfort so think it was worth the investment. Plus if it ever breaks apparently you just send it back and get a free replacement, can't be bad!

> Slightly off topic, but our daughter is in her last year at hairdressing college, over the past 2 years they have been told if a client comes in with 'visitors' as they call them, they have to have a quiet word with them ask them to go home, treat the problem and return when clear.  Yesterday my daughters next client was absolutely crawling with them, she spoke to her new tutor who told her she HAD to continue doing the clients hair.  I'm afraid my daughter wasn't having any of it and refused, she did get a telling off but to be honest, if I were in her shoes I would have refused too.

In my hairdressers where I worked the Hairdressing Federation told us that if we had a client with "Visitors" we had to take them to one side and discreatly so not to cause embarrassment to the client,  explain the problem ..ask them to go home ,treat themselves(we even told them the best stuff to buy)  and then come back amd we would cut their hair no problem.
All children of primary school age were checked before we began cutting the hair but if we were to miss any we continued to finish the cut and then sterilise the whole work station and all our tools.Towels had to be kept separate and washes separately too ...whole thing took about 20 mins and was a nightmare when the shop was busy.

9 times out of 10 the headcheck we did prevented us missing anything...parents were pleased we did itas half of them didnt know what they were looking for and no one at school would check for them and we couldve been closed down if we had passed them onto any of our other clients so I always say better be safe than sorry

If your daughter had started to cut the clients hair the correct protocol would be she  would have to finish it as its not fair on the client and very embarrassing to be told  to leave with half a haircut of wet hair especially if they were unaware of the problem ...however if your daughter noticed them before she began cutting she has every right to feel the way she did and the teacher shouldve backed her up

She hadn't started, and refused to do it, she did have a quiet word with the lady in question, but it was her tutor that told her to do it, as I said she didn't and got a bit of a telling off when the client left, but she stuck to her guns.

my god how times have changed.
We had a nit nurse come to our scholl and all those found to be affected were sent home with a letter.

> She hadn't started, and refused to do it, she did have a quiet word with the lady in question, but it was her tutor that told her to do it, as I said she didn't and got a bit of a telling off when the client left, but she stuck to her guns.

then your daughter was in the right and the tutor shouldve backed her up and I wouldve done the same thing in her position

We have a 'joined' family where 2 kids go back to their Mums at weekends and she doesnt chekc their hair. Her younger children have them so the olde children come back infested.
I gave up on prescriptions long ago, the head lice just get use to them. I now use Avon tea tree thyme and shampoo conditioner all in one (its on special offer for £1 in the latest book) and I go through my girls hair every  time they wash their hair (even though they are all now all teens)  it is great and does really well. With perservance you can and will clear them, so I wish you allluck and say keep going"

> it must be the hair gel you guys wear. But......... perhaps it was?

fair point. i suppose they either couldn't grip or would get stuck (depending on the gel lol). they like clean hair and i suppose having stuff on it like gel means its not clean (as in bare rather than dirty)

vosene have just brought out a new shampoo which they claim prevents headlice.  I'm not sure if it works but it is fairly cheap so might be worth a go for anyone who doesn't want to use treatment chemicals and would prefer preventative measures.

Seems expensive at £10 (from Boots)

It's gonna need to last a lifetime at this rate ;-)  I've actually got one & I do use it on all of us (well actually dh does his own ;-))  With ds I use it as a daily comb as his hair is short, dd & I get conditioner.  Have to say although it indeed helps it isn't 100% with just conditioner alone as it doesn't get all the eggs out of dd's hair, but we persevere.

Starting week 4 of school now, still nit free, wish us luck :-D

Might be something to do with the severely tied back hair & plaits of dd, smothered in hairspray & tea tree meanwhile ds has short hair combed with nit comb & a large dollop of extremely gunky hair wax (dh was sent out to buy hair gel & came back with it)

A water sprayer with water, tea tree and lavender oil is a great repellant and nit killer (also neem oil is excellent stuff) - i think Asda do a pre made spray containing teatree oil, not sure if it has lavender in it as well if not I would add some (lavender is good stuff and insects HATE it).

I once somewhat embarrassingly caught nits off a lad, and kept getting reinfected with them (he had to be fair, extremely long and VERY curly hair, as i do myself so it wasnt for want of trying that he struggled to get rid)...

After several doses of the expensive chemicals and still having the dang things, i came up with a management routine - wash hair with a tea tree based shampoo, leave that to sit for a bit. Then rinse and condition - using cheap conditioner with a few drops of tea tree chucked in for good luck. Whilst cheapo conditioner on, comb through using nit comb, dunking it into a jug of water to remove any trapped lice. ugh.. (rather than dropping them in the bath as id do this sat in the bath).

Then rinse and use my normal conditioner (no way was i useing aussie hair miracle to comb out nits with! have you seen the price!)... again with a few drops of tea tree..

Then rinse, comb again and dry... and spray through with the lavender/tea tree mix.

Repeat this several times a week - to break the life cycle of the nits.

That kept me nit free despite repeat contact with the Infested Boy. (Though i stay nit free better since he was dumped )