School is officially back in full swing. For the next ten months, your children will be bringing home copious amounts of permission slips, homework assignments, and reading material. Many children will also be bringing home lice. While some school years are worse than others, lice in the early school years is a dreaded reality.
Though lice are as common to humans as fleas to a dog, they come with a certain yuck factor that can cause panic to set in when they’re discovered. The stigma attached to lice is a direct result of the misinformation that circulates about them.
Experts in the field suggest that lice are generally harmless. They are not carriers of disease and pose no immediate threat to the host on whose head they reside. Since lice may cause itchiness of the scalp, there have been cases where infections occurred from scratching. Mostly, they are a cosmetic problem rather than a medical one.
The common head louse is a wingless insect about the size of a sesame seed. It makes its home on the human scalp and survives exclusively on human blood. Unlike the flea, it is unable to jump and can only transfer from one person to another through head to head contact. Rarely, if ever, are lice transferred through sharing of hats or hairbrushes.
Without treatment, a louse family can live on the scalp indefinitely, laying eggs and growing rapidly in population. The female louse can lay up to four eggs per day near the base of the hair shaft where the temperature is warmest. The egg is attached with a kind of glue, making the removal of the nit (the outer shell of a louse egg) extremely difficult.
Much of the stigma lies in the belief that lice are a result of uncleanliness, but in reality, lice are not particular that way. They will take a clean or dirty head of hair without bias.
“The reason lice are more common with school age kids is because they are in closer confines and are more likely to have head to head contact with each other,” says Sarah Phillips of Slice of Lice in Winnipeg. Her head lice and nit removal service came about after her own daughter came home with lice some years ago. “I had a really hard time getting rid of it. I hated the stress and frustration it caused to my family. I hated how alone I felt as well. I never wanted anyone to feel the way I did. So here I am.”
Phillips fondly refers to herself now as the Chief Picking Officer of her lice removal service. Her clients know her as the Lice Lady. Her process includes using a special comb designed for extraction of the bugs and eggs and seeing the client in another week for a follow-up head check. She also sells products to help repel lice in the first place.
Signs to watch for, she says, are scratching at the scalp, especially when your child isn’t paying attention, like while watching TV or sleeping. Children may also develop a rash on the back of the neck, experience gland swelling, or be tired or cranky even when they’re getting plenty of sleep.
“The bugs do their work at night as they do not like the light,” Phillips says.
Phillips recommends that parents arm themselves with some of the tools of her trade before their children come home with the problem. Peppermint spray and nit combs are among the items she sells at her location at 39 St. Anne’s Road. Weekly spraying and combing of your child’s hair at home goes a long way toward prevention or catching it early. Tying their hair back can also help.
Kids and parents can assist in preventing lice from becoming a school-wide epidemic.
“When there is [the discovery] of head lice, it is extremely important that the parents tell the school and the child’s closest friends as, without communication, the lice will keep spreading from head to head,” says Phillips. “You have to be a friend and tell a friend. Someone gave lice to your child, your child will pass it to someone else and so on.”
She suggests that school staff play an important role by sending home notices with up-to-date information. “Education is the best defence for battling head lice,” says Phillips. “I would love to see head checks done in schools again.”
Finally, Phillips closes in on the myth that lice removal is a matter of all-out warfare in the household. “You do not need to bag things up when lice are found. Too much emphasis is placed on cleaning the house [and] your time is better spent on the child’s head as well as communicating with your child’s friends. Lice do not live off [of] the head, nor do the nits lay in wait for the perfect moment to hatch and re-infest your family.”
