Lice Don't Just Hide in Your Hair

Ah, the wonderful memories my second daughter’s birthday will always bring back. She is 12 today, and exactly one year ago while fixing her little sister’s hair, I saw a tiny little thing move.

I looked closer and got a hold of it. I ran to the office, Googled it, and sure enough, LICE! I was horrified. The horror really set in when I remembered the birthday girl had just had friends at our house for a sleepover birthday party the night before. They’re tweens. Tweens like to do hair at sleepovers and that involves sharing brushes. I hollered out to her to hurry into the bathroom, and I lifted a chunk of her hair. Nits, A LOT of nits! Perhaps the crimper fried most of the adults as I only found nits.

We proceeded on to church where I grabbed the hand of any child of mine caught scratching their head. When I caught hubby picking lice off of a head like an orangutan and squeezing them to death between his fingers, I shot him a look that a wife should not give her husband, especially at church. I was just sure everyone who saw that, and the itching, knew we were infested and were silently damning us to hell right there in the sanctuary for daring to show up.

After church, I Googled some more information, set to work on a home remedy, and ordered an array of products on Amazon to use in a couple of days if that didn’t work. I vacuumed, washed, boiled, and bagged up everything! I treated my entire family because I decided I had it too since my head was suddenly sooo itchy. Since then I have realized the strength of the power of suggestion. How many times have you scratched your head while reading this paragraph? Don’t lie. I know you have. I can barely continue writing because I keep itching mine!

End of lice story, right? No. Ridding my family of lice was not the only thing I felt compelled to do. I very easily could have treated the lice and told my girls to keep quiet about it at school. I didn’t. I could have just hoped the heat of the crimper prevented any from being passed on alive. I didn’t. I could have figured that it would likely take weeks for the moms of our guests to discover lice in their daughter’s hair, by which time it would be unlikely that they would link it back to the sleepover. I didn’t. And I thought of doing all these things.

Instead, I decided I needed to be brave enough to do the right thing. I had to be brave enough not to worry about the social stigma associated with lice. I texted those moms and the moms of my younger daughter’s friends and every mom I saw at pick-up the next day.

I would guess that most of you have at least checked your child’s head for lice after hearing hushed tones in the hallway and whispers in the parking lot about a possible outbreak. I would also venture to guess that you have rarely heard it from the mother of the child who actually has lice. These little insects don’t just hide in hair and thrive on blood from a scalp. They also hide behind secrecy and thrive on the fear of embarrassment.

*When parents secretly treat lice and do not tell their children’s classmates to be on the lookout for it, one child passes it to another, and that one doesn’t find it and treat for a few weeks and in the meantime passes it to another, who doesn’t find it and treat it until they have passed it to another, and so on and so forth, forever, and ever, and EVER!

If we were all open and honest about lice they would no longer have anywhere to hide. We could be a united force that eradicates all the lice simultaneously. Instead, we worry that people will think we are somehow ‘less than’; that we don’t wash our kids’ hair often enough, or that our houses are dirty. We are afraid our child will be ridiculed by their peers. We are sure that if we are the first to speak up all the other mothers will be happy to blame our child for it when theirs gets it too.

But here is the thing… Lice do not magically materialize out of thin air when a kid’s head is really dirty. (And thank goodness, because we would have a rough go of it at my house if that were the case.) They are passed from the head of one child that touches the head of any other child, clean or dirty. Lice don’t discriminate. They are not contemplating crawling onto a child’s head and thinking, “Ohh no, this one’s dad is a doctor and his mom washes his hair for him every day. He’s too rich, gotta leave him alone…. But ah-ha! Here is a child of sufficiently low socioeconomic status! Her single mom is a waitress and has to wait to get paid to replace the bottle of shampoo that ran out a couple days ago! I will crawl onto her!” That’s just not how it works, but you would think so from the way some people behave.

But us moms can beat this. We need to talk about lice the same way we talk about bedtime strategies and potty-training. We need to share our experiences, so we can all learn from and help each other. Next time you find lice at your house, get brave and find yourself a megaphone!

Crystal Foose is the mother of seven children ranging in age from 1-16 and blogs at So-So Mom from out in the middle of nowhere Colorado. Like her on Facebook.