Your child comes home from school with a note from the teacher saying, “Tommy has lice”. As a mother, you may suddenly feel like this reflects on you and somehow means you’ve neglected your child and his or her head that’s now full of itchy nits and lice. But please rest assured, head lice has nothing to do with dirty hair, nor is it a sign of personal hygiene. Whether you’re blonde, brunette have dread locks or a perm—as long as you have a scalp and have blood running through your veins, you can have lice. Head lice is a very common problem among school children. As the school year starts, here is some basic information on lice that will be helpful just in case your child comes home with a “your child has lice” note.
What are Nits & Lice?
Head lice are small insects about the size of a pin head. They are equipped with tiny mouths that they use to drink blood from the scalp. Nits are the egg cases laid by head lice and they tend to stick to the hair and are pearly white in color.
How do you get head lice?
Contrary to popular belief, lice can’t swim, fly or jump. Lice are one of the leading communicable infections affecting school children who can contract them through:
- head to head contact
- body to body contact
- sharing personal items i.e. brush or hat
- contact with contaminated furniture
What are the symptoms of head lice?
- An unnerving tickling sensation that something is moving in your hair and on your scalp.
- Irritability from scratching the scalp, decreased attention span, shortness of temper — but this varies from person to person.
- Intense itching and small, red bumps on your scalp, neck and shoulders as a result of an allergic reaction to the saliva that lice inject during feeding.
- Lice on your scalp, behind your ears at the base of your neck or on your clothing. Lice are tiny, about the size of a strawberry seed, but they can be up to 1/8 inch (3 millimeters) in size.
- Lice eggs (nits) on hair shafts. Nits resemble tiny pussy willow buds. Nits can be mistaken for dandruff, but unlike dandruff, they are hard to brush out of the hair.
How do you check for head lice?
- Wash hair and towel dry. Hair should be damp not dripping wet.
- Make sure there is good lighting and then comb with a fine toothed comb from the crown of the head to the end of the hair strands.
- Look carefully at the teeth of the comb after each brushing for any sign of moving lice.
- Do this repeatedly, moving around the entire scalp.
- If there are head lice you will discover one or more on the teeth of the comb. These may be difficult to see and it may help to wipe the the comb with a tissue and look for lice there.
How do you treat lice?
Nits that are found within one quarter inch of the scalp need to be treated, nits further from the scalp are from an old infestation and don’t need to be treated.
Be careful with nits because even after the head lice have been removed the nits can continue to stick to the hair strands. These will either grow out or you can remove them manually using a fine toothed comb.
You can treat lice by using over-the-counter shampoo or lotion that you can buy at most Shanghai pharmacies. Please follow the instructions for application. (Over use of the shampoo or lotion may cause resistance.)
As your kids start back to school, be sure to check their scalps regularly. Don’t be ashamed to admit to family and friends that your child has head lice. It’s a common problem. If you or any of your family have persistent problems with head lice be sure and see your doctor.
Here’s to a safe and happy new school year.
|
