I’ll never forget the first time I discovered lice on my kids. I didn’t know what lice or nits would look like, and when I found a suspected egg sack, it was too small to see what it really was. I used my kid’s microscope to see what we had.
It was definitely a nit, and it was empty. The horror continued as we found actual lice.
Not knowing where they are, what to wash, what to quarantine, what may have been cleaned but then cross-contaminated…. There might be nothing more stressful.
I think I used 24 outdoor garbage bags to get all the bedding and stuffed animals captured.
I checked everyone’s scalp twice a day, using a flea comb to sift a few hairs at a time.
A flea comb won’t catch the lice, because they are small enough to slip through. The lice comb tore the hair out of my kid’s scalp. So, I used my fingers to remove each louse, egg, and nit. It gets straining on the eyes, so I picked up a pair of magnifying glasses to help, so I don’t have to have someone hold a magnifying glass.
A headlamp might also be a good idea.
We did over-the-counter lice treatment, but continued to find lice on the scalp. We couldn’t get on top of it. The pediatrician said lice are now resistant to the lice treatments. The pharmacy couldn’t get their hands on prescription strength treatment. So, our pediatrician gave us a great recommendation.
We used soap. A gentle cleanser is all you need to suffocate and dry out the buggers. Repeating lice pesticides would be too harsh on the skin, and doesn’t suffocate the lice.
I generously saturated the scalp with liquid soap to trap the lice in a coating with no air in it, then used the flea comb to remove excess soap from the hair. Then, I blow-dried the hair to take away any water the lice may have survived on. This also dries the soap so it won’t be messy when the kids go to bed.
In the morning, we washed the soap out, and rechecked for lice and eggs. We removed any remaining nits. Repeat if necessary (we had no need to).
I was a lot more comfortable with the gentleness of this cleanser than the lice pesticides, and am much more confident in it, as the only way to kill lice is to suffocate them. We didn’t need any additional treatment after doing this method.