Eeek Nits

[Kapowski]

Hi guys ,
il start of by saying im not a hair dresser im a beauty therapist , but I was hoping to get some professional advice , you prob wont tell me any thing I haven't already heard but figured its worth a try ...
My daughter is 8 and continuously has nits .
Iv tried , lotions that you put in for 10 mins , 12 hours & over night
iv put tea tree in her hair / shampoo , I nit comb it all the time ahh but they love her .
I recently bought the nitty gritty best nit comb ever but seriously im doing her hair with it 3 times a week and pulling out nits all the time , the only time the poor girl dont have them is in the school holidays .
The school say nit lotion is free on nhs so just carry on treating but I do feel sorry for my poor little girl , who I cant bring to the hair dressers, its so bad she has started naming them
My son hardly catches them and thank god I have never caught them , was just hoping you may have some other advice I haven't tried Il try any thing except shaving her head which believe me I have thought about .
Thanks in advance x

 

[Lellipop]

The best thing to do and I know this will take time, but its the only thing that works 100% is to remove the lice by hand, Section the hair and work your way through it removing the lice then comb through to remove the nits. I have found that using straighterners will kill some of the live lice if done properly.

 

[BABSann]

I had the exact same problem with my daughter.The problem I had was her best friend's mum was NOT checking her daughter's hair,consequently I would treat my daughter and she would be re infected by her friend.

I went into the school and asked the tutor to speak to my daughter's friends's mother(who I never saw)and she said they couldn't do this.:sad:I explained I was spending a fortune not to mention the time and pain involved in going through the whole nit comb procedure once if not more a week.But she couldn't help and told me she plaited her hair to ward the pesky things away.

I kept my daughters hair tied back whenever at school,regularly checked her hair,ran conditioner through her hair and sprayed her every day before she went to school with a t tree spray.It helped,but it wasn't til she stopped going to that school that the problem solved itself.

Anyway,good luck and keep at it.If it's a friend infecting her and you dont speak or see the parents it's a hard one to solve...ref re infestation.x

 

[Kapowski]

Thanks , I guess back to the nit comb I goo
Eeek really hope im not doing it to the end of primary school , but i think yr right there is alot of reinfection going on , when I was at school we had nit nurses so infected kids would get a letter home I can honestly say I only caught it once in primary school but other parents dont check and its so annoying and disheartening im so use to it now I feel like mother monkey haha picking nits out of her head any way thank you for reading x

 

[tierra2006]

There was a thing on embarassing bodies kids, where a girl had a terrible nit problem. They sent her to a specialist where they actually hoovered out the lice and treated the eggs and combed them out. I don,t know how much it would cost but the girl needed 4 treatments, but eventually they were gone. They even counted how many they got out with the hoover thing! I never knew such a thing exsisted but I used to have terrible problems when I was young, I even had them last summer when both my daughters had them, horribl horrible things. Goodluck!!

 

[Bev Rose]

My kids had these critters from time to time and i found this is THE BEST method which helps to rid them.....it's not a one off and you need to keep on it Fiona.

Break the life cycle of the lice
Day 1: (for example say Saturday)

Get a nit comb & afteer washing the hair, use loads of cheap conditioner. Thoroughly comb through the hair, but after each swipe through with the comb, wash it in a bowl of water to remove any lice on the comb, keep this up until you have covered the whole head ...twice.

This will remove the larger headlice that are adult egg layers.

Leave the hair without washing for 3 CLEAR DAYS - this will allow time for the lice too small to get on day 1 to have grown big enough to get with the comb & conditioner method. But they will not of become egg layer, so no more eggs will of been laid since day 1.

Day 5 ( ie: Wednesday after the Saturday of day 1 bug busting - leaving 3 clear days - Sun, Mon & Tues)

Wash hair & repeat the process of day 1. The lice you remove will be a bit smaller than the original adults removed 1st time, but they will not old enough to be be egg layers but will be big enough to get out with the comb.

Day 9 (ie the Sunday after the 2nd bug busting Wednesday - leaving 3 clear days -Thurs, Fri & Sat)

Repeat the process of day 1 & Day 5. These lice removed on this day will be the ones to have hatched out from the eggs of the original adults you removed from day 1 - the Saturday effectively.
You will notice that the size of the lice are a bit smaller, non-egg laying.

Day 13 (ie Thursday from the original saturday you started - and this will be 3 clear days since the last comb through which was the previous day 9 Sunday)
Repeat the shampoo & conditioner and removal with the nit comb.

Assuming your child has not picked any other lice since the 1st day of treatment, they will be headlice free. So it will take 2 weeks in all.
IF, however, during your 2 week process of 'Busting the Bug' you see that you have got a lice bigger than the others, such as the ones pulled out on da 1, it means your child has been re-infected by another child with adult egg laying lice - so you have to start as from day 1 again, this long drawn out process is an effective, chemical free way of breaking the actual life cycle of the lice, by removing the lice that will become egg layers before they are fully mature enough to lay.

Inbetween the washing periods, use all other methods of protection like tea tree oil.

I hope you get this sorted Fiona, I know what a true pita it is. It's not fair the concientious parents such as you should have to go through this rigmorall because there are parents who couldn't care less about their child nit infection or are just plain ignorant of it & the processes to deal with them.

One evening, my son had been bathed & in his pj's sat watching tv. I knew he was 'clean' with no nits as I had checked him that morning. Then he scratched the back of his head!!!!!! I brought him into the kitchen and moved the hair in the nape of his neck and a mahoooosive lice fell out. I was gutted, dragged him up to the bathroom and begain day 1 - I did not find any other lice, but that did not mean he had not had eggs laid by the big lice, so i went through the 2 week cycle of bug busting with him anyway - I never found another, but continued until the 2 week process was over.
In the meantime, i went ot my neighbours house as that has been where he'd been playing that day & told her, nicely, that my son has come home with lice. She said 'Oh, my kids don't have anything like that', then she called her son over - moved some of his hair & he was covered in the buggers! OMG she said, what are they??? - Ingnorance is bliss, i spent the rest of the evening, with her son and her in her bathroom showing her how to bust the bug and deal with it. It was my insurance that if i showed her, my son would not get them from him again.

 

[Penners]

I've done the conditioning comb thing and it does work but you do have to be very thorough ' gotta catch 'em all'
I have also tried Hedren ( I think its called this) its a greasy lotion that you pour onto the hair and scalp - rub it around all over and it coats the little blighters and suffocates them, in 2 minutes I was combing out dead lice gross but better than when you comb the live ones and they flick off the comb sometimes and crawl on you! ( making me scratch thinking of it!) You do have to set a reminder and do it the following week when the eggs have hatched to remove them before they mature, and of course they may catch some more in the meantime!! my daughter wore one of those hairbands that is a bit like a scarf and that seemed to keep her clear from the jumpers.

 

[Bev Rose]

Head lice do not 'jump' from head to head, they crawl from one head to another.

Primary school age children do spend time with their heads together in the classroom and they catch the headlice because they crawl from head to head (Nits are not lice, they are the egg of the lice)

 

[marioned]

What good advice and well done for broaching the subject with your neighbour!

 

[Kapowski]

Thanks ladies I will continue with the nit combing and do it as you advised.
The Nitty Gritty is great gets alot of the eggs out too
Its the reinfection the thing with girls they hug and put there heads together in play so its doubly hard
I have tried the hedrin stuff iv tried it all , but I was getting worried about constantly putting chemicals on her hair I mean i was treating with lotion once a week , now im combing every 2-3 days ahh I am determined to conquer them thanks so much for all your words xx

 

[Bev Rose]

You only need to comb them out every 3 clear days as I put in the above post, it works honestly!

If, in that time they have bigger lice, than consider that day as day 1 again & work it from there. It's a bloody hard slog, but worth it.

I watched 'Embarassing Bodies' on the TV the other night & this child hadhad lice for 4 years!!!!
It's plain lazy - you have to keep on it, and they will go.

Then I used tea tree oil shampoo, which acts as a deterrent alledgedly!

 

[~cHeRiSh~]

I swear by the Nitty Gritty lice comb. We had problems with recurring lice on my 3 year old and was daily combing with conditioner and used Hedrin and Full Marks etc, but the stubborn things kept coming back. It was only using Nitty Gritty daily which got rid of them for good.

I still use it now and occasionally comb a nit out which I am convinced he gets from nursery but by combing daily they don't get the chance to lay eggs.

 

[paulette]

My daughter recently had head lice and it was awful! She came back from her dads late on a sunday night scratching..Had alook and yes live lice.
Went to chemist and treated her hair with derbac.

Next day was combing and combing..even found another 2 live ones I couldnt believe it.

Carried on for days combing her hair about 5 times a day with conditioner I was so paranoid about it all, prob as it was her first infestation.
I also washed every thing on a hot wash and tumble dried to be sure nothing was still living anywhere, I was reading lots of different things on the internet about how live lice can live off of the head for so many hours, so wasnt taking any chances with anything.

Good tip though after applying the lotion and leave on overnight let them sleep on an old white towel then the towel collects them so to speak as they fall out and you can just throw the towel away.

Anyway even now Im still finding dead eggs and pulling them out by hand as the comb just doesnt pull all of them out.
As suggested I actually straightened her hair with straighteners to be sure I the eggs were all dead.

Everyday for school I spray her hair with a diluted tea tree oil and water mix and plait her hair, she hates it but then I remind her about the constant combing I was doing and how she hated it and then shes fine about having her hair done!!

Also I wash her hair in a tea tree shampoo. One thing I have noticed though now is she has a dry scalp, I wonder whether this was from the treatment even though it is safe for children I think it had dried her scalp out now.

One ridiculous thing though I had my brother and sis in law say to me they didnt want their children sharing a car for the school run incase they caught them, this was after I had done the treatment anyway but I was fuming about that how ridiculous is that...ignorant actually. I hope their kids get em then Ill find myself telling them the same!! haha

 

[Kapowski]

Il go one better than that , my son caught it from my little girl and went to his dads for the wekend and his dad sent me a note saying he didnt want him in the house when he has nits apparently nits should be contained and not spread haha cant wait till there child starts school ! Contained and not spread is that the official guidelines haha Funny how people with kids dont understand its a nuisance not hygiene thing
I have been using the tea tree but so far not repelled them from her poor ggirl , but its all about the nitty gritty comb x

 

[Snugglepuss]

Just to say that when I worked at school, we had an uniform policy which stated that the girls MUST have their hair in plait/ponytails etc.

If it is policy, (then I will say in most cases) it should be followed up and indeed one of the regular "nits/lice girls" had her mother brought in and had the situation explained to her. Also we also got a "nit" alert letter sent home to us BUT it didn't name individual children.

Hopefully this is what has happened with out your knowing - hope it all works out xx

 

[paulette]

Will be going to buy one of those Nitty Gritty combs as they look much better than the plastic one I got in the late night emergency chemist!! and to be honest it looks better for getting the eggs out on my daughters hair too as her hair is so fine. Can you buy them from leading supermarkets?

Funny how people can be when it comes to head lice and nits etc, im sure some folk think its only girls that get them too!!

 

[Kapowski]

Paulette you can get the nitty gritty in boots , thats the only place I have seen them on the high street here in salisbury they are about £10 but they are guaranteed for life and are really good , they also sell them on ebay

 

[paulette]

Thanking you X

 

[Cathie!]

I have the Nitty Gritty comb but the best combs I have found are

bug busting kit - Google Product Search

My daughter was always riddled too and now with these combs, she is no longer. You do have to do it every 3 days or you won't break the cycle.

The combs are not as harsh as the Nitty Gritty one IMO.