Many parents are horrified when their children pick up head lice. Find out more about them.

What are head lice?

They are re tiny, wingless, parasitic insects that live on the scalp and suck blood, causing severe itching. The good news is that head lice can not hurt your child but they are a nuisance and cause the child irritation.

How can I detect head lice?
Scratching is often the first sign of infestation. If your child is at school you will get a letter informing you if there are head lice at school. If you do get a letter about lice, you should act on it immediately by checking your child’s hair. If your child scratches a lot, especially around the back of the head or the ears, check for lice immediately.

Lice aren’t easy to see: the bugs take on the color of the hair they’re hiding in. In fact, you may never see a louse. It’s common to discover an infestation of head lice based on lice eggs (nits) alone. Nits are also tiny – about the size of sesame seeds – and creamy off-white or pearly white in color.

Head lice do not jump, fly, or swim. They spread by direct contact, ‘walking’ from one hair or head to another. They happen in the best circles, and an infestation does not mean that you or your child has dirty hair, in fact some people say that head lice prefer clean heads.

How do children get lice?
Most children get lice from classmates or a friend or from shared clothes, such as a hat and sharing the same hair brush or even working together over a book, or example, with heads touching.

How do I get rid of lice?
You can buy over the counter shampoos from your chemist or drugstore. To ensure your child remains free of lice and nits, you must remove ALL the nits with a nit comb and follow up with a second shampoo treatment seven to ten days after the first.

Because lice travel easily from one head to another, getting rid of lice and nits right away prevents them from spreading to other family members, allows your child to go back to school quickly, and put your family routine back on track. If your child does have lice you should not send him/her to school until they are fully cleared.

Don’t forget the nits
You have to get rid of the nits, too. Each remaining nit will hatch into a new generation of lice, making it crucial to break that maddening cycle.

After applying the lice shampoo wash with normal shampoo then rinse.
Apply conditioner and leave in the hair, this will help the nits slide off the hair. Use a normal comb to get any knots out of the hair. Then use a steel tooth comb (nit comb) and comb the child’s hair until all the nits are out. Continue to check your child’s hair daily and reapply the shampoo 7-10 days later. This is important even if your child has no nits.

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