"You're Child Has Lice"

No one wants to get that call from the school, yet it happens.  Kids jackets all hang up closely together where bugs can crawl from one jacket to another.  Teenage girls share brushes.  Not to mention our kids have friends who spend the night.  So do you bundle your kids in a plastic ball, homeschool them and tell them they are never allowed to see their friends?  That's a bit extreme.  There are over the counter COSTLY chemicals that you can put in your kids hair daily.  I have always kept 2 Tablespoons of Eucalyptus oil in my shampoo (shake it before using it) and washed my hair daily.  When my kids got it, I didn't (it didn't work for them because as small children we didn't wash their hair every single day).  A friend of mine uses 2 Tablespoons of Tea Tree oil in her shampoo the same way.  

The above picture is the various stages of lice BLOWN UP.  Lice are small little buggers.

Above are pictures of what the eggs will look like in blondish and brown hair.  The bugs are just slightly larger.

So what do you do if you have lice?  Well I think shaving your kids head bald is extreme, we surround ourselves with toxic chemicals everyday, so let's not add more chemicals to our kids heads.  Here is a simple, common sense treatment for lice.  There is an important trick, the quicker you take care of this the quicker it is over.  It may even be in eyebrows and eyelashes.

• Bag up all the stuffies in your house and leave them in the garage for two weeks.  If your kids have a few that they can't live without, wash them in 130 degree water and then dry them in high heat for twenty minutes.  

• Wash all of your bedding in 130 degree water and dry in high heat for twenty minutes (but it's going to be longer, let's be honest.

• Vacuum beds, carpets, corners of beds, couches etc.  We're talking deep clean.  Do not dump your vacuum in the house, take it outside and dump it.  Then go back in the house and keep going with your deep cleaning.

• You can either throw away barrette's, combs, brushes, etc.  Soak them in boiling hot water (good luck not melting them), or spray them with rubbing alcohol.

• I've seen recommendations to spray your bed, etc with bleach water.  But let's be real, your kids will be inhaling this and it's dangerous.  Just spend the time vacuuming.  Use a an upholstery brush or a nail brush to dig deep on the edges of beds where they can be hiding.

• Take some vegetable oil and warm it (key words are warm, not boil it), if you can comfortably tolerate the oil on your wrist you should be okay on the stove top and then pour it in a zip lock bag.  Have the members in your house wearing crappy clothing and sitting in the kitchen or somewhere that has a tile floor.  Carefully poor the oil from the top of the head down.  It helps to have the family member hold a wash cloth over their eyes as a buffer zone.  You will probably see the lice falling out of their hair, and that is fantastic.  Bag their hair for twenty or thirty minutes while you clean up the mess.

Okay so it's been twenty minutes, what now?  Sit them down and section their hair into small sections starting with the top.  Carefully comb their hair with a nit comb starting from their scalp and go all the way to the end.  Make sure you clean the nit comb often.  The heat from the oil should help melt the glue on the eggs.  The kids hair will be so slippery the bugs and eggs SHOULD slide right out.

If it is in their eyebrows and eyelashes, you are going to have to comb their eyebrows.  To get rid of it in eye lashes you will have to smear petroleum jelly on the eyelashes and comb them out while your kid is squiggling and mistrusting you.  Did I tell you this would be easy?  Nope.  In the long run, you may wind up visiting your doctor about the eyelash ice if you can't get rid of them.  But doing it this way is cheaper and as safe as natural remedies get.

When you're done, wash their hair like normal but add some Tea Tree oil to their shampoo.  It will help alleviate any discomfort from scratching the bugs.  Check their head, bedding, etc every few days for signs of re-infestation.

SHOPPING LIST

Tea Tree or Eucalyptus oil (prevention)

vegetable oil

large zip lock bags

nit comb

rubbing alcohol

spray bottle

large garbage bags

petroleum jelly (if you have eyelash lice)

A LOT OF PATIENCE FOR EVERYONE