How To Treat Lice

A few months ago I got word from the school that someone in my daughter’s class had lice. I didn’t know what to look for, but I started checking my daughter’s hair every day for lice. When she started complaining about itching, I started looking even more closely. I didn’t see any “nits” or lice, so I assumed we didn’t have a problem. I took my daughter to get her hair cut and was shocked when the hairdresser found two live bugs and a bunch of nits! Once she showed me what I was looking for, I realized that I had been looking for something much bigger.

I immediately went on the search to figure out what to do to get rid of the lice.  I used a “pesticide” on her hair and started pulling out the individual nits. Just when I figured that I had it cleared up, my other daughter ended up with them! Unfortunately, the pesticide did not work on my other daughter and we had to try something else.

Here are the basic tips I learned after reading everything I could online and dealing with two girls with long hair and two rounds of lice:

• Using some tea tree oil in your own shampoo while you deal with the lice in your kids’ hair can help you keep from getting lice yourself. Also putting product in your hair and using heat on it can help keep it away.
• There are a lot of different types of products–some are pesticides and some are natural to smother the lice. All of them work and do not work. It seems each child responds differently and it depends how well you remove everything from the hair manually.
• Sometimes it is easier to cut out the individual strands of hair than try to use the combs to pull out the eggs.
• Don’t go on YouTube to watch videos of lice unless you are prepared to be grossed out.
• If you catch it early and take care of it properly, you can be completely rid of the lice in about a week.

The product that ended up working out best for us was called LiceMD Lice & Egg Treatment. It actually helped slide the eggs out of the hair better than anything else that we tried.

Have you ever had to deal with a lice infestation? Share what worked and didn’t work for you.