Is that the same as girl cooties?

1) Head lice like clean hair a lot more than dirty hair
2) Many parents, upon discovering head lice on their kids, purposely do NOT tell anyone who came in contact with their kids, thereby spreading the problem
3) No matter what you do to contain an outbreak, there will always be some parents who do dick about it, guaranteeing a new outbreak. Bastards

Anyway, I also found a few chemical free ways to combat the problem. Good thing, because the head pesticides just weren’t doing the trick. Anyhoo:

1) Coat the hair and scalp in olive oil. Leave on for at least two hours, with the head covered in plastic wrap or show cap to prevent jerri curl smears all over the house. The oil suffocates the little bastards. Fortunately, lice can’t seem to build up an immunity to this.

2) When washing the out the oil, rub some corn meal in first to absorb some of the oil. Then use Dawn dishwashing soap. Shampoo won’t cut it.

3) When combing out the nits and dead lice, dip the comb in vinegar. It loosens the glue which holds the eggs onto the hair.

4) Repeat #1-#3 every other day for two weeks. You will miss some nits unless you shave your scalp and each treatment kills the new lice, which cannot lay eggs until they are about two weeks old.

5) Every day, take the sheets, blankets, pillowcases, mattress covers and pillows and toss them into the dryer for 30 minutes or more. I also recommend washing the sheets using the hot water cycle; not necessary for the big stuff.

If you do all of the steps above, your family will be lice free soon. Also, put some tea tree oil in the shampoo and put some in a spray water bottle, which you will use to treat coats/sweaters/backpacks. This helps prevent reinfection because the lice don’t like the smell of tea tree oil. It doesn’t smell like a human.

Practical advice aside, I would say that the reasons for the upswing in lice outbreaks are numerous. Some of them:

1) When people get infected, they are too embarrassed to tell others, which pretty much guarantees the spread.
2) Lice have become resistant to the pesticides in the treatment, meaning that not all die. One louse survives and you’re guaranteed to have another outbreak
3) Some parents just don’t try to clean up their kids and houses when an outbreak occurs, which means that everyone they know is at risk.

Sorry for your troubles. The lice thing really pissed me off this summer. Some friends of ours fought a summer long battle to contain the outbreaks in their household. Vigilance and diligence are the keys. As an engineer, I can be pretty regimented and anal retentive when I want to be. My natural inclinations cleaned up our house in just a couple of weeks.

Then in the summer of 2006, at the same time as my husband was suffering his first psoriasis flare-up, I had to battle bedbugs in our house. It took 2 months of weekly poisoning the mattress, boxsprings and carpets before the nasty little bugs finally died out. Now not only is my head itching but also my hands and legs from remembering that summer. *shudder*

Because it’s really nasty? I can’t stand that slicked down oily hair look. Call me a child of the 70s (“The wet-head is dead!”). But we shouldn’t have to oil up our heads to prevent lice, we should just wash our heads and other things regularly. Even when I was a kid, lice was a serious fear. I never got them, but heard of kids who did. The idea of having to be subject to smelly medicinal shampoos and having my hair combed with a lice comb was one of my childhood fears. (I had long, very thick, very curly hair combined with a sensitive scalp — the way my mother combed my hair normally made me feel as if she was pouring acid on my head.) Also, lice was considered a mark of dirtiness. Now it’s considered damaging to people’s “self-esteem” to judge them on the basis of how clean they keep their homes and businesses. Of course a lice infestation isn’t anyone’s “fault,” but the idea was to make sure everyone held to a standard of hygiene instead of worrying how wonderful people felt about themselves. Those were different days.

Added: I also wonder how widespread use of wall-to-wall carpeting contributes. I grew up in a house with wood and tile floors and a couple of throw rugs. Wall-to-wall carpets are a bitch to clean, as anyone who has had their carpets steam cleaned can tell you.

When my oldest was just 2 she get a case of lice from playing in a box of stuff what was crawling with lice, we learned later. She didn’t have much hair, but they were all crusted up on her eyelashes. I felt like the worst mother in the world.

http://www.tonyrogers.com/video/stupidDog.wmv

Not sure what that says, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni

What changed?