A close family friends children keep giving my 7 year old lice.
I know it’s them because We had a really bad infestation last year and ever since I’ve almost developed ptsd from it, so I’m always checking my child’s hair now.
We were nit free for months and then after the mother swearing they were also nit free we had a sleepover. Two days later, after seeing no one else my child had three head lice (I’ve just spent two hours combing and treating). I’d checked her hair before going over there in case of this exact thing (like I said, this is really messing with me)
I’ve spoken to the family before and they have said their on top of it, aside from not allowing sleepovers anymore what can i do?
We cannot stop seeing them altogether as we do quite a lot of activities together and while I’m understanding of how frustrating it must be for them I would want to be told if my child was the reason for the spread. I’m not in a place to treat the other kids myself or I would.
So do I say something and piss them off or do I just keep treating my daughter, and pray that with no sleepovers it doesn’t happen again?
11 Replies
KP24 used to make a preventative spray (I have no idea if they still make it). I used to drown my boys hair in it every second Friday before they went to their father for the weekend. Their father’s girlfriend’s daughter would give it to them every time they were over there. I was constantly letting school and daycare know every time I treated them only to be told no one else had them. I did the right thing and let their father know to treat the girls hair only to be very rudely told the girl didn’t have them (another source told me that the girl had very thick hair and the mother never treated her hair properly, when she did get treated). Ultimately the infestations stopped when their father’s relationship ended and they no longer had contact with the girl, but the KP24 preventative spray went a long way to reducing the severity of the infestations.
OK so I think you mean OCD not PTSD.
Use a spray before you see them, use and spray hats and tie their hair back if its long. Comb their hair as soon as you get home.
Not much you can do if you choose to send your kids over therr for sleepovers.
Take their own pillows, change them on return. Cover their hair on oil, co ditioner or hair spray before they go
I'd just not see them. Thats just fucking gross . There's no need for nits to be out of control like that and if it means the kids find other ppl to see until the other family are on top of their infestation then so be it. It's not worth the stress, money, and time to treat multiple heads from the disgusting little insects.
I must be the only parent that doesn't completely freak out over lice, I'm more of a "thank God it's only lice" parent 😂
In all seriousness, I'd rather deal with head lice than gastro, viral infections, influenza, hand, foot and mouth disease, conjunctivitis or the plethora of other contagious infections small children seem to spread.
Sure, lice is annoying, uncomfortable and a little bit icky but it's not the end of the world.
If you're as close with this family as you say you are, you should just be able to speak plainly and say something like "I found some lice in Sally's hair, I know our kids were hanging out the other day so I'm just giving you a heads up that you might need to check Rose's hair".
That's non accusatory, non judgmental but gets the point across that lice is an issue. You could even follow that up before the next playdate/sleepover with something like "How did you go with Rose's hair? It took me so long to treat Sally's so I'm just being over cautious and checking in with everyone she spends time with lol".
Try and sympathise too, lice can be really hard to get under control (as I'm sure you know after dealing with a bad infestation yourself).
I also don't think lice is worth losing friendships over, if your daughter really loves her friend and going for sleepovers just braid her hair tightly before she goes (and ask her to leave them in), pack bedding from home that can be washed when she gets home, then just run through your daughter's hair with conditioner and a fine tooth comb - which in my opinion is the most effective lice/egg removal technique there is.
I feel like I could be your close family ‘friend’. I’ve literally been struggling with nits, what feels like almost continuously for over 12mths. I have a few kids different ages, mostly boys. I treat every week. As soon as I see one nit. Check everyone’s hairs treat mine as needed. Few days later kids scratching (mostly the 7 year old) only time I feel like we’ve been nit free in the last year is when we had the first big covid lockdown and school was off for ages. I treated the kids hair (and my own) with or without nits every 4 days to make sure we broke the cycle. Washed literally everything (like I do every single time). Trust me when I say ‘I’m on top of it’ because I really am. I can’t control where my kids are getting it from (school) and I’m doing the best I can to make sure it’s never a bad infestation but yeah if I miss one week of treatment I’m back scraping what feels like hundreds of frigging eggs of of the boys hairs.
Treating the hair is the easy part, in my opinion, it’s breaking the cycle and NOT getting new nits from another source (like school) that’s the challenge.
Could be the same infestation on your childs hair, eggs are hard to remove and have never found a treatment that kills everything. The only way to really get rid of them is use 3 different treatments, it bombs them. One for dry hair, use as directed, then one for wet hair, tuse as directed, then one for combing out eggs. It takes several hours but it works. My son has very thick curly hair we were forever dealing with lice and treating, nothing worked until I bombed it.
Why on earth do people freah out about head lice. Its not the end of the world. Yes it's annoying, it's expensive to treat, but heck, kids get lice and there isn't much to change that. How do u know her kids aren't catching them often through no fault of her own, maybe she is treating them often but it's not always and easy cycle to win. G, my kids had them on and off for months with weekly treatments and constant combling. Stop being so judgie
My daughter kept bringing nits home from daycare and then I started using a new detangler on her hair every morning, we haven’t had nits since and her hair is a breeze to brush when she comes back from her fathers and hasn’t had it brushed for 2 days.
I’m now an addict and have about 12 bottles at all times with all different scents. Everyone compliments me on how good her hair smells and I’m no longer worried about nits or who she plays with.
You could give it a try, it’s an Australian company in Melbourne called twisted fizzers.
I would want to know. Just send a simple text message saying 'I just checked daughters hair as she was scratching and found some headlice. Just a heads up'
I stopped an amazing friendship.
Because her children constantly had lice. She would treat but not do bedding etc.
All three of her kids had them visibly all the time.
I wouldn’t have her at my house because I didn’t want them here and my kids kept catching them so I stopped seeing them.
She didn’t understand what had happened and I’d already had numerous polite conversations about treatments and doing the bedding etc