Lice - HELP ME

[kdubs923]

DD has lice (age 8 lol she's 7). This is our first experience. No official notifications from school, but as I was combing through DD's hair yesterday she mentioned her teacher told kids to keep jackets in their backpacks instead of on the hooks to keep all the coats/hats separate. So sounds like it's going around.

I am already an anxious person and this is stressing me OUT. Talk me through this like I'm five.

I discovered live lice last night in her hair as I was brushing it post shower. That turned into a 3 hour combing session where I picked any nit that I could find. I didn't have any lice product on hand (and couldn't get some because DH was at the ER with DS to see if he broke his foot at a ninja birthday party earlier in the day - It was A DAY yesterday, OK?!).

I pulled LOTS of nits out. I Amazon overnight'd the combs & treatment stuff so it's just got here. So I should redo the combing I did yesterday, now with the product. How frequently do I repeat this process? I kept her home from school (oh and DS too, because he's on crutches, but looks like no break lol) I know change all bedding, she's the stuffed animal queen, so I need to figure out what to do with those. Can they be quarantined to our garage or something for a week or two? There are some sentimental ones I think she'd be SO SAD to lose forever.

DH took a look at my hair and didn't see anything, but of course I'm super itchy at the moment (thank you anxiety). DD frequently comes in our bed and is a snuggle bug, so I should treat my hair as well, right? 

If her jacket was last in her backpack on Friday, would everything in her backpack be dead? I'll wash anyways, but I'm trying to figure out what's reasonable vs overkill.

Please share any tried and true methods/products. I ordered all new hair brushes so we can throw ours out (she sometimes uses mine). But if we're still treating hair this week, do I assume that any brushes used this week might be contaminated and get new brushes again next week to be safe? My anxiety is making me sort of spiral on the small things I CAN control and right now washing bedding & buying brushes seems to be my focus.

[countthestars]

Hey - so sorry you're going through this. DD and I had lice in 2014 and I'm still a little traumatized. Honestly, find a place that will check you both and comb you out. Bring fully charged phones/ipads because it can take a while. Most places will guarantee their work and I felt so much better having it done by a professional. Sidenote: it was not inexpensive.

ETA: If you want to do it yourself, I'm sure you can! I just never trusted that H was actually looking and until a professional did it for me, I wasn't convinced they were gone. It looks like there are a few in your area that will come to your house for you. 

[mrsGreeko]

We’ve had lice a few times and it no longer stresses me out. I will say one of the times DD2 gave it to me and I had DH check my head and he didn’t see anything. But then a few hours later a freaking louse ran down my face so DHs are terrible at this sort of thing. My amazing aunt and SIL both came over to help comb me out after I determined DH was useless for this.

I have a whole method. The Nix/rid shampoos don’t usually work IME. Most lice have become resistant. So I use licefreee (yes three e’s) spray. It is highly concentrated salt water and works significantly better. Anyway here’s what I do. It has worked every time whereas the treatment shampoo has never worked for us.

on day 1: Licefreee spray and a nit comb out (I have a fancy nit comb that works really well) on everyone in the family. Spray everyone’s head to saturation following the directions in the spray and comb through everyone’s hair (combing is actually unnecessary with this method, but it makes me feel better). Wash and dry all bedding on hot/high. Vacuum. Bag up anything from the bed that can't be washed for a month. Wash all affected people's clothing in hot and dry clothes on hot.

7 days later another licefreee spray treatment and nit comb out. Dry all bedding on hot.

7 days later, another licefreee spray treatment. No comb out unless I've seen more nits in my in between checks (cutting out nits if I see any). Dry all bedding on high again.

It's highly effective, only relatively annoying and inexpensive. And then I check my kids weekly for lice for a few months get lazy and stop and then remember again for awhile. I try to make them keep their hair in a ponytail or braid for school. And we use fairy tales lice repelling products to a certain extent (although one got it even using them religiously so I put less stock in them now). I also instruct my kids to keep their heads away from friends especially when hugging, never share hair ties/hats/brushes, etc. they've been pretty traumatized by having it so they are mostly willing to do these things.

[InBetweenDays]

DS had it twice in elementary school. Like the pp, it stressed me out the first time but ended up not being as big of a deal as I expected. But we have a great and somewhat reasonably priced lice salon here. So we took the whole family there to get checked and then DS was treated.

ETA: We also didn't have the issues others had. We did have to have everyone checked in order for them to guarantee their work. Even DH who is basically bald. We paid $10 each for the three of us to be checked, and then for DS was $100/hr and billed every 15 minutes. His took 30 minutes so it was $50. So all told $80 plus tip. Then we had to bring DS back a few days later for a check but that was included in the initial fee.

I don't have treatment recommendations, but generally lice start to die after 24 hours without a host. So if you just quarantine stuffed animals, backpack, etc a few days those items should be fine.

[ohgillian]

Ditto a lice salon if you can afford it.

[penguingrrl]

Ugh, we had lice in like 2014 and it still haunts me.

What I learned: lice don’t live long off of a host, so unless you have a toddler that’s napping still bedding and stuffed animals that aren’t with the kid aren’t going to have lice on them because they don’t live that long off a host. I still washed all bedding on hot, but didn’t freak out about not being able to wash the pillows, etc.

You want to comb daily for about 3 weeks. The nits you’re able to see are the hatched eggs, the actual nits are basically invisible to the naked eye. Eggs usually hatch at roughly 10 days, so if you keep up the routine for 3 weeks you’ll catch them all after they hatch and before they can lay new eggs, which will break the cycle.

Everyone in the house needs to get treated and combed, even if you don’t think you see them. My H was phenomenal at that, and checked me daily for weeks.

[dale]

We have a wonderful lice salon who told us to do our comb outs with the Terminator comb. This is the lady we used and when we went back after a week for evaluation everyone was clear. www.youtube.com/watch?v=P86A7m4xlNY&t=182s 

I can't find the Happyheads products anymore, but any conditioner should work. We've also used plain white conditioner with a drop of peppermint oil in.

[nicolewi]

I am so sorry. I would be FREAKING OUT b/c we haven't had it yet, also have tons of stuffed animals. My daughter just wanted me to check her last night b/c her had was "itchy" but I didn't see anything.

I always thought that if we got it, I'd look for professional help. I think it would be worth it to do the lice removal service thingy. But maybe not; maybe it's really not bad. Previous posters seem to be rolling along just fine.

[sdlaura]

We've dealt with lice twice in the past.

Here there are services that come to your house (you can find them on yelp). Not inexpensive, but you can put the cost through healthcare flexible spending if you have an account. I think it's worth having someone come out and treat the kid with lice and check everyone else in the family. While the person was sitting at our kitchen counter checking and treating everyone, that's when I ran around the house and washed all bedding and bagged stuffed animals and that sort of thing. So it was a really sucky few hours, but then it was over. The service people come back out at some interval later to make sure they got everything.

[kdubs923]

Hi guys - this is all really helpful. I did look into salons and DH thinks I'm overreacting. He says it's unnecessary but he and DS have very short hair & would buzz it if needed... So I think we're coming at it from different perspectives lol.

Thankfully it's nice out, so kids are outside. DS can't do much on crutches, but can play legos at the table on the deck.

All bedding has been washed, DH has vacuumed and sprayed the couches/pillows. Stuffies are going to be bagged and sent to the garage for a month? I'm treating DD's hair. I'm going to make DH do my hair just to make me feel better. I also ordered the LiceFreee spray to spray at DH & DS's hair just because. I also ordered the Fairytails stuff. I normally need to use a detangler on DD's hair each morning, I'm happy to switch to that one if it provides even a bit of protection. I normally put DD's hair up (more to avoid crazy tangles that happen when it's down all day) but have gotten lazy putting up the fight in the morning. We'll move back to braids for school days.

I think we're just going to repeat this process every 7 days for a while...

[sdlaura]

kdubs923, one of the reasons we went the expensive in home service provider route is that they pick out all the eggs/nits and you're completely done. Stuffies only have to be in a bag for 24 hours and then they can come out, and you're set. Doing it myself did not appeal to me because then there are likely still some eggs on someone's head, and they can continue to hatch. *shudder*

[cricketwife]

Omg, MY ENTIRE HOUSE had lice in December. We went to the salon and it was about $800 because we all (four) had it. The salons will generally only guarantee their work if they check the entire household. I was in total freakout mode. The stuff they use on your hair is basically olive oil that smells nice. If you want to treat yourselves, you want to take olive oil or some other oil and SOAK - DRENCH - use WAAAAYYYY more than you think that you need so they are all suffocated. That gives the live lice. HEAT kills the nits. So like a flatiron will kill those. You want to resoak every 3-4 days so that any nits you miss will be killed by the oil.

Our lice salon "guaratees" but you still have to do the at home oil on their schedule with zero flexibility, which meant that we were all doing our final oil treatment on Christmas day. Fun times.

Shaving the two with shorter hair is a legitimate treatment option, but I'd have them checked first.

Also, PSA, I learned that our salon will do a check on teachers for free at any time.

Oh, and as PP said, their only habitat is the human head. They can't live more than 24-48 hours of the head. Anything the head of someone with lice in your house has touched should be vacuumed and or not touched for 24-48 hours. The lady said "there's nothing special about putting things in a plastic bag. They lice are very slow off the human head. They aren't trying to leave the bag. They aren't coming for you. The bag is to remind YOU, "hey, don't touch this stuff for a day" (They told us 48 hours and I did 72 to be extra cautious.) 24 is probably enough, but when you're in it, you want to do everything ALL THE WAY, lol.

[tiki]

This is just to give you one less thing to worry about, but permanent hair dye kills lice. If you're comfortable dyeing your own hair, you can do it once now and again in about 10 days and pretty much guarantee you won't catch anything from your DD.

[sent]

Jan 30, 2023 14:36:13 GMT -5 tiki said:

This is just to give you one less thing to worry about, but permanent hair dye kills lice. If you're comfortable dyeing your own hair, you can do it once now and again in about 10 days and pretty much guarantee you won't catch anything from your DD.

One of my assistants said when she had lice as a child back in Colombia, her aunt dyed her hair to kill it. 

I don't have much to add here except that I am sorry you are dealing with the stress of all of this. The school said DD had lice last year. I was adamant she didn't. We have no lice salons here. Leads to lice ladies were dead ends. I was ready to take DD to one to have her looked at and be "diagnosed" with lice or no lice but it was impossible. It must not pay well because why else would no one do it? There are millions of people who live here! Anyways, I ended up having her looked at by 3 physicians who all said no, they don't see lice. Well sort of, the last one was my long time dermatologist who took several long minutes to flip her hair all around and declare he found 1 one nit. Everything I have read about lice says nits don't work solo like that and I think he was just trying to keep me from roping them into a dermatology office vs school ordeal. (I don't have time for that). Hundreds of dollars in copays and a year later, I still see the white things in DD's hair that they claimed were lice. The white things are part of the way her scalp sheds. 

I am still so mad at them. 

[awkwardpenguin]

I wish there wasn't so much stigma about lice, it's really common and not a health issue or hygiene issue.

We've been through it three times, and I'd probably just do combing with conditioner or Cetaphil and the LiceMeister or Terminator combs. We have never had success with OTC treatments, and by the time you are finding live lice, your kiddo has been infected for several weeks so it's not really an emergency.

Basically do one REALLY good comb out the first day, then comb every other day until 10 days after finding your last live louse and you are also not finding any nits. Avoid head to head contact and you only need to wash things that have touched their head within the past 48 hours. This worked for us 2 of the 3 times.

If all else fails, spinosad suspension (brand name Natroba) works almost 100% of the time but it is prescription and expensive, but probably cheaper than a lice salon. No combing needed.

[charlatti]

We also used a lice salon (they closed with Covid and never reopened, sadly) so no good advice on treatment, but ditto PP who said life won’t live long on stuffies and things like that. They want to be on a human host so they rarely if ever transfer to stuffed animals. I washed all bedding and washed the animals I could wash, vacuumed others, and quarantined the rest for a day or so. (This was in 2015 and no lice since then!)

[ssmjlm]

We didn't go to a salon because my kid had it the weekend of a hurricane, yay.

I covered her hair in liquid coconut and put it in a shower cap. She sat with that for a few hours on day 1. You have to shampoo it out with dawn, but oh well. Then we repeated that on day 2 for another few hours.

I combed with a comb from CVS (see hurricane) while I waited on stuff from amazon. Spoiler alert, my kid's hair is so fine, that the fancy lice comb from amazon didn't do a whole lot, her hair slid right through.

Day 3 my panic amazon order arrived and we sprayed both of us with the lifefreee spray PP posted above: smile.amazon.com/Licefreee-Spray-Head-Lice-Professional/dp/B003KYNNTS/ref=sr_1_7?crid=CCUGS8IDV0Y2&keywords=lice+spray&qid=1675116295&rdc=1&sprefix=lice+spray%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-7.

One bottle did both of our heads. We followed the directions and DH elped me comb my hair, but I joked that since I was flat ironing my hair daily, I don't think anything survived.

We put stuffies in the dryer on high heat for a few days.

Honestly, it didn't come back. I checked every morning when doing her hair. I think it was the long weekend from the hurricane that maybe several kids battled it that weekend and got rid of it.

[keh2oblue]

My daughter had it twice in elementary school. We got really good at doing periodic checks.

It’s actually not that hard to get rid of them. I got the really good lice comb, some hair clips, and a roll of paper towels. Separate the hair section by section brushing with the comb and wiping on a clean paper towel each time. You’ll be able to see any nits or live lice that way. Repeat daily until gone. No special meds needed.

Everything else gets washed on hot and dried (or quarantined in plastic bags).

[goldengirlz]

Yes, get a professional if you can!

The nightmare was over in 24 hours; it was great.

ETA: We didn’t have the problems other people seem to have had. She didn’t require my H to come in, it only took one visit and I didn’t need to do anything at home. Maybe because she used some kind of medical device instead of just a comb out? It was so easy!

ETA2: I found my receipt. It was $132, including a $22 tip. Maybe not as cheap as DIY but not exorbitant for the peace of mind either.

[whattheheck]

If it’s nice enough outside - do the combouts outside.

[pittpurple]

I live overseas and no one here does anything outside treating the people for lice - my kids both had it once about 5 years ago and I followed the school's guidance and it went away and hasn't returned yet. We washed their bedding and dried it outside in the sun and treated everyone's heads (including mine even though I couldn't find anything as I have a TON of hair and was just icked out by the whole thing)

We just did one of the treatments, combed everyone through outside (took hours for me but my kids have thin hair so was easy) and did it again a few days later - never saw a sign of lice again.

[jeaniebueller]

I would comb every night, just have her shower, use cheap conditioner to help comb it. You don't really need the lice shampoos. Put her pillow and other bedding in the dryer on the hottest setting for an hour. Just bag her stuffed animals if they can't be dried, keep them in the garage for awhile. I would also keep combing your hair every night too.

[magpie]

DD had it once and we used the licefree spray and combing, plus washing all the bedding. I remember looking into salons, but it was easier and faster for us to just do it at home. DD is pretty sensitive about getting her hair combed/brushed, so I think it was better for her to do it at home.

[meanie]

I would just go to a lice lady and throw alllll my money at making this go away, but we have a LOT of hair in our family and this is my nightmare.

[SusanBAnthony]

Maybe we got lucky but the one time we had it, I shaved DS and for DD I put conditioner in her hair and smothered the adults (wore it under a shower cap for an hour, same as the mayo concept) then combed out the nits and dead adults. I repeated every 3-4 days until I didn't find anymore nits. Basically the nits are hard to kill but only live on you, the bugs are easy to kill but live everywhere. So if you keep combing the nits out you don't have to clean anything. I still did but only the first time, not repeatedly.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! I just put shows on for DD and slowly combed.

[lo]

I’m a teacher and got it once from my class. I had super long hair and treated it myself and then used a metal comb (not the one included in the kit) and combed it out using tons of conditioner every day for a week or so. This was before kids.

My daughter got it around age 5 and it spread to me, but not little sister. We did go to a lice salon but was quoted $800 for the two of us, so I did it myself again. Treatment and lots and lots of conditioner and comb outs every day for awhile. It’s stressful but not too bad!