Head Lice, Our Experience
I am a regular mom who loves spending time with her kids, learning to cook, jogging and making crafts. I have two boys and two girls and I spend most of my time running them around from soccer practice to choir to football games. I like to think that in most situations I am a level-headed, reasonable adult capable of handling difficult situations. Little did I know that one small case of head lice would turn my whole life upside down.
My son plays football. He started a few years back and loves being a defensive linebacker. His team is pretty good and he works really hard. I am often really impressed with the hours the coaches spend working with the boys and training them to be better. It really is awesome. My favorite thing about him playing football is the responsibility that it teaches him. He has turned into a more mature young man, willing to take it seriously and be held accountable. My least favorite thing about him playing football is that through sharing a locker at practice my son contracted head lice.
I had not thought even a single time to talk to my kids about head lice, other than the common knowledge that everyone should avoid sharing hair brushes. Boy, was I wrong. It is so much more than hair brushes!
The boys often just throw practice gear and equipment all together in a large clump on the sidelines or floors of the locker rooms. Let’s be honest, Jr. High age boys are not the most diligent about showering and cleaning up after themselves. Even after practices sometimes I have to pester my son three or four times to bathe. Why is that? Can’t they smell their own socks?
Anyway, ultimately he had caught head lice from another player. He shares a bathroom with my teenager daughter who also caughter head lice from him. Thankfully, the other two children did not catch head lice. I always hear it is usually the younger children that get lice, but in my case it was my teenagers.
We started them on the lice shampoo, looked through their hair for eggs and sat and picked them out for hours. It was not fun. Not fun for them or for me. I cleaned their rooms, like really, really well. I washed anything I could think of that would be infected. It was really a gross experience and I thought I had finally got it behind me….I thought.
Several weeks later, my daughter complained of itching again and asked me to check her scalp. I started to look through her gorgeous, long, thick beautiful dirty blonde hair and suddenly – my heart absolutely sank. I could not believe it! She still had head lice! I found actual adult lice crawling around on her scalp. I tried not to overreacted, but inside I was dying. I did everything right!? How could this happen?
This time, I got some professional advice. I google searched head lice clinics and found some experts that helped me to understand that over the counter shampoos and washing hair are not effective tools against killing head lice. They will inevitably keep coming back. I am so glad that I found Lice Clinics of America. This experience has taught me that it never hurts to ask the experts for help. Always, always get some advice before tackling a problem like this. If I had just called in the first place, the problem wouldn’t have returned and left me in a panic.