Pre-treating for lice: smart or dumb?
 

So I just got an email from my kids' preschool saying that the lice issue has gotten worse in the classroom. She is now advocating for all parents to treat their children with lice stuff even if they don't have lice.

Can someone please explain this logic to me?
As far as I can tell, there's no pre-preventative measure for lice. You treat it when you get it.

That sounds excessive. It would make more sense just to be not share hair brushes, hats, etc. and to check the scalp daily.

She's bullsh1tting you. You can't prevent lice with poison.

You couldn't pay me to put insecticide on my kids' heads preventively. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to do it even with an active infestation. I'm just not into poisons. Henna is effective against lice. Henna combined with fenugreek or artemisia is supposed to work even better. I use henna regularly on myself, but I don't want to use my good henna on kids (who don't really want red hair anyway), so I keep some low-dye-content henna and fenugreek in my house, just in case my kids ever get lice.

Mehandi.com shop - Henna will cure head lice, dandruff and ringworm

I would not use lice treatment on my children "just in case". What I would do is slather them with some goopy hair grease or gel while it works it's way through the class. Lice don't tend to like goopy hair. I vaguely remember reading that they hate tea tree oil too. Good luck avoiding them.

I wonder if she's basically trying to trick everyone to treat at the same time (whether or not they have lice) to try to eradicate the lice problem.

There's a shampoo called Lice Guard (there's also a leave in spray). It's going around my daughter's classroom and the teacher has recommended it. She's using it and so far she hasn't gotten lice, even though it's been going on since the January.

I got some tonight. Another kid went home with lice today, I just do not want to deal with it. My daughter has waist length hair, I can't imagine having to comb through all that with those tiny combs. I've been washing her hair with some mint/rosemary/tea tree/lavender shampoo and conditioner, spraying a waxy product in it, braiding, pinning up, and covering with hair spray.

They've also banned bows for girls and made them start putting their jackets, hats, scarves (not that they're using them a lot, it's March in Louisiana), and book bags in those huge Zip Lock bags, same with their rest mats.

well, i don't know about pre-treating with chemical products, but i do know that lice aren't as productive in an oily environment. and while children with fine, straight, caucasion hair may not be able to get away with having oils like coconut or olive left on their scalps and hair without it becoming an aesthetic issue, i think it would be smart to consider an oil leave-in treatment for your whole family since they all have textured hair. not to the point of an oil slick when you touch it, but enough to coat the scalp and strands from root to ends. and keep it that way on a daily basis until the lice is eliminated from the classroom.

also, alaffia makes a great black soap shampoo that has neem oil, tea tree, rosemary, and lavender, all of which are supposed to be natural lice retardants.

is your child's school a nit-free school? some schools surprisingly allow children to return to the classroom with nits in their hair, as long as living, moving lice aren't detected. but the eggs will eventually hatch, so i don't see the point. my friend's children's schools don't have a no-nit policy and the lice eventually became a school-wide issue for several months.

where i live, the public schools have a no-nit policy. if they see even one nit on one strand, they won't permit the child to return.

good luck. lice can be mentally taxing to deal with, especially when not all parents are being diligent in eradicating them and are still letting their kids play and share and be around others when their heads are still flaming hot zones.

Update: Lice Guard smells like citronella.

I didn't think it would be completely innocuous.

Thanks. The school - while private - does allow kids to return to school if they have lice. They're doing daily checks. My kids don't have it and if they did, I'd just shave em bald.

It's just hair. It'll grow back.

fyi, i'd be doing daily checks of not only your kids, but you and your husband and anyone else who lives with you as well. if the kids do develop lice that they got from school, there's a great chance that it may already have spread through your home as well. my girlfriend knows of this all too well. their whole family had to be treated. and because their school (which is private) doesn't have stringent lice policies and they allow the children to return as well, her children (and many others in the school) were re-infested multiple times after being given a clean bill of health by their pediatricians and school nurses.

i know that it's just hair and that short/no hair isn't usually as stimatizing for males as it is for females, but personally, i think shaving a child's head is extreme (an infestation that can't be under control is another issue). it's not as difficult as many people think it is to rid natural hair of lice and their nits. the major problem (from what i've witnessed) is when a "clean" child is returned to a lice-ridden environment.

good luck. i hope the exposure at your child's school is mild and passes quickly compared to what people i know have experienced.

A shaved head is only extreme if hair is valued. My kids see hubby grow and shave his head all the time. They don't care.

Now for me, I'd rather do the treatment than go bald. My bald noggin isn't as pretty.

that's great then. no aesthetic issues for the kids to have to deal with, if it came to it.

i stressed daily checks at home because by the time a child is determined to have lice, everyone in the household has already been exposed and may likely have them too.

good luck.

A friend puts tea tree oil in her daughters conditioner and never had to deal with lice in her waist length hair. Maybe just coincidence, but couldn't hurt.

We have them shampoo once a week with Rosemary Repel.

I work t a preschool and had my first encounter, ever, last year with lice. I started doing research and became super paranoid. Thankfully our daycare bombed the whole place the night of when we found out a kid had lice and did not let the kids return until thy were nit free.

In my research, lice like clean non-product-y hair. They also do not like coconut, lavender, or tea tree. So if you use oils or products in your hair, more than likely you'll be ok. These, IMO, are healthy preventives than the lice poison.