Ahhh Little Friends have landed!!!! (Headlice Treatment in general)

Member Name: aflynn

Product:	Headlice Treatment in general
Date:	24/05/02 (244 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: errrrr, none, ---are you serious????

Disadvantages: horrible, riffy , little bleedas

Well its my first time................. Charlie has been at nursery since she was 8 months old, school nursery, and now we are in the last term of Reception and its finally happened - NITS.

Its my own fault. I should have realized that putting a 5 year old's hair in a pony tail every morning was meant to be a nightmare. I should have known that if you have thick strong hair (unlike her mother ? sigh!), that it would get luggy and would end in a crying match every time I picked up a brush. But no I thought I would be clever, I took Charlie to have her hair cut into a lovely bob, no more messing about with slides and bobbles. Just a quick flick with the brush and away we go!!!!

So having her hair down for the first time - Charlie took full advantage and walked around swinging her hair as if she was on a L'Oreal advert. Unfortunately she swung it in the direction of a little bleeda with nits.

So I had just parked the car at school and happened to glance at Charlie's hair. To my utter horror there were little white flecks which needed to be pulled along the hair to be freed. One blood curdling scream later (at this point both kids were pressed firmly against the back windscreen wondering what on earth had happened), I took her into school.

I have now found out that having a child with nits is like being pregnant - everyone wants to give you horror stories and advice.... Oh yes my little 'un had them as big as yer 'ouse, three weeks of combing to get rid of them, nearly took her 'ead off doin' it..... etc etc etc

So off to Boots. I walked up to the counter confidently to ask for a nit comb (although I nearly bottled it and asked for condoms instead!!) but unfortunately they were sold out. Season for them the pharmacist said sympathetically. So I bought three bottles of industrial strength Tea Tree Oil conditioner (Boots Own) and got a comb from Sainsbury's.

So at this point
I better explain what Nits are.

Head lice are orrible little insects. They are small about the size of a pin head and live on the scalp. They only live on humans and feed by drinking your blood. The head lice are not the Nits - these are the egg cases laid by the head lice which are stuck onto the hair shaft. They start of black (with the lava inside) and when they are white it means the egg has hatched. The life cycle of a head louse is about 14 days from hatching to laying millions (exaggeration but it seems that many) of eggs and then dying (hurrah!). They tend to live behind the ears and at the nape of the neck. This is the best place to find the eggs (and boy did I find them)

Now there are several ways to combat these nasty little things and here they are:

I did ask the pharmacist if I could use paraquat but she got all sniffy and started mumbling things about NSPCC and the fact that it is very poisonous for children - so I decided to give that a miss.

There are chemical treatments on the market - Full Marks being one of them. This is a liquid which contains Phenothrin ? a chemical which kills the lice. It is expensive at £9.99 for a 200ml bottle, and there is no guarantee that it works.

Damp Combing

Now the Consultants in Communicable Disease Control are not sure that this method is effective - no scientific study has ever been conducted. But everyone I know says that combing through conditioner is the best way to sort out the little blighters. So wash your child's hair with shampoo as normal. Rub hair so it is not dripping, then apply a lot of conditioner - Tea Tree Oil is said to be the best as the head lice prefer something a little more upmarket - (not really its the smell apparently and I have to say they have got good taste!!)

Now comb the hair with a wide tooth comb to remove the tangles. Section the hair and using a fine toothed comb (nit comb) start at the scalp and comb th
e the length of the hair. After each sweep check the comb for creepy crawlies. Repeat for entire scalp.

The worst thing about this, is that although the comb may remove the bugs, it doesn't remove the eggs. So if you see an egg separate the hair and then pull the egg along the hair shaft until it comes off. Make a yukky sound and wipe on a piece of tissue.

You may find that during this operation your head becomes extremely itchy - don't worry you probably haven't been infected it's just psychological!!! You will feel riffy for about three weeks until you have more important things to worry about.

Now you have to do this for a week - every night - at least. Then every other night for the next week. This is the only way to make sure that you have removed the eggs and lice completely. You will have to put up with crying and moaning, moving of head just when you had found an egg etc etc. You will have to plead, cajole, threaten to get the child to sit in one place until you have finished. The first night it took two hours. But eventually there will be light at the end of the tunnel and you will have a child with silky soft hair and no white bits in it!!!

Charlie now has her hair up for school - on the first morning she was upset and said she didn't want a pony tail - but as I said to her its lucky I didn't make her wear a swimming hat.............................

Hope you never have to go through this


If you do my sympathies are with you


Thanks for reading


Mel

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