Keep your kid’s head nit-free

Parents of school-age children battle to keep their families free of head lice. Arm yourself with a comb and chemicals, says Karen Browne

There comes a moment in every mother’s life when the dewy-eyed innocence of parenthood evaporates. For some, it comes when your 2-year-old points a stick at you and shouts: “Kill, kill!’’.

For me, the horrid moment of truth came when my 3-year-old son, Jasper, snuggled on to my lap to watch The Teletubbies recently. We cuddled close and I gently ruffled his blond locks - and discovered a head louse jauntily marching along a hairshaft.

Filled with appalled disbelief, I tried to persuade myself it was a greenfly from an afternoon spent rolling about in the garden. But no. As I frantically ran my fingers through his hair, I found dozens of tiny, black eggs.

Bribing him with biscuits, I spent the next hour pulling out individual eggs and placing them on a wet wipe, but it soon became clear that although only one louse appeared to have hatched, Jasper was well and truly infested. As, it transpired, was I.

As it takes about a minute for a louse to walk from one head to another, sustained close contact is the key factor in their spread.

Head lice live close to the scalp and feed on blood: the itching that their human hosts experience is due to an allergic reaction to bites, rather than the patter of tiny footsteps.

A female louse will live for about 30 days and lay about 2,000 eggs during this period. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t favour clean hair, nor are they partial to any particular hair colour.

When I was young, the nit nurse was a regular feature at primary school, but since this sort of community healthcare was phased out, experts agree that head lice are on the increase. So how do you get rid of them?

This is a moot point. There is a range of over-the-counter insecticides available. (In the UAE, you get Para shampoo/spray and Freelice shampoo, for example.)

These types of treatments are generally effective, but none has proved to work 100 per cent of the time, as head lice in a local area can build up resistance to the most common products.

If one treatment fails, another should be tried and a pharmacist should be able to advise you on what is the best insecticide to use locally. A general practicioner will prescribe a lotion, provided a live louse can be shown, but it is often easier to buy the products over the counter.

After the initial application, the lotion must be reapplied a week or so later, to kill off any eggs that have survived and hatched. But although such insecticides can be used intermittently, they are not suitable for frequent use.

Parents who prefer not to use harsh chemicals, or who want to maintain lice-free heads, can call upon a host of so-called natural alternatives, including lotions and shampoos containing tea tree oil and neem tree oil.

Anecdotal evidence - rather than clinical trials - suggests that regular use discourages re-infestation rather than clearing the problem.

But, crucially, alongside the use of any treatment, you must employ a good, old-fashioned nit comb, or indeed, a battery-operated version, which electrocutes the lice on contact.

Combing hair while wet, after it has been liberally coated with a leave-in conditioner, is thought to be the most effective way to combat and eradicate head lice. Combing should be repeated every two to three days. This will remove most lice and damage any remaining ones, so they can’t reproduce.

But the unpalatable fact of the matter is, once your family has been infested, the likelihood of it happening again is high.

Cassandra Jardine, author of How to be a Better Parent, says she has spent the past decade attempting to rid her family of recurring head lice. With five children, ages 5 to 14, at schools in south London, she now regards nits as unemotionally as she would dandruff.

“Originally, I discovered we had them because I’d been scratching for some time. I went to my GP who prescribed coal tar shampoo, which didn’t work, so I visited a top trichologist who charged me heavily for a sweet-smelling treatment, which also had no effect,’’ she says.

“Then, a friend said: ‘You’ve got nits’. So I pulled a comb through my hair and it was crawling with them. I was furious that neither the doctor nor the trichologist had spotted them.’’

Jardine says the whole family was infested, and so began the endless cycle of harsh chemicals, mild repellents, daily lotions and overnight unctions. Having tried virtually every product on the market, including treatments from Poland, she believes that regular combing and vigilance are the key.

Bug busting

The best way to detect and prevent head lice is to wet-comb hair every three or four days. If one member of the household has head lice, treat everyone in the family.

• Wash the hair and apply a liberal amount of a leave-in conditioner. Towel-dry and ease knots out with a brush. Divide the hair into sections and fasten in clumps. This is to ensure it is systematically treated.
  
• Take a section of hair and, bringing the comb right to the scalp, comb to the end of the strands. Then, clean the comb in running water or with a tissue. A white towel around the child’s shoulders will allow you to see if lice fall out.
  
• Head lice tend to congregate at the base of the neck, round the ears and at the hairline, so pay attention to these areas. If the child’s hair has been clear for two weeks, continue to monitor his/her head on an ongoing basis.
  
• If your child is under a year, or anyone in the family is pregnant or suffers from asthma or eczema, consult your GP for advice before using insecticide.