Children, Hair and Lice: One Mom's War With the Nit Monster!

I was reminded of this incident because of a recent post at Fenicle:  Sticky Tack Drama

No, not Knit, Nit!  Nit as in the eggs of hair louse. 

This happened some years ago; well, sometime around 1996 or 1997.  I received a lovely note home from the nurses office at my children's school letting me know they had contracted lice.

We were living in a rather rural area so I wasn't really all that surprised.  With four children, two adults and a home to treat; I was not looking forward to this endeavor.  Hubby and I purchased the treatment kits, we thought we were following the directions and as far as we could tell, all signs of the lice were gone. 

The children went back to school and in a couple of days, they were back home; infested, yet again.  I am sure I screamed, cause at that point in my life I was a basket case anyway.

While I may have a cluttered house at times, it isn't dirty, but then again, lice prefer clean (hair) to dirty....I bet you didn't know that!

Now that all of the product was gone from the first treatment we had to purchase more. We spent approximately $200 for these two treatments.   This time I made sure I followed the directions and even bought one of those metal nit combs that are supposed to be better (which they are) and cause irritated, irrational mothers to pull hair out of their little one's heads.  Of course that doesn't describe me at all.

Of course the house was retreated...etc, etc.  You get the process! 

Can you believe that didn't get rid of them?  I had finally had it!  My children had missed school because we couldn't get rid of the nits and I found out that if even one, one little measly nit is left, you will be going through the whole process again in about a week.

I spoke with the nurse, she advised us of some home remedies to try...yea; okay, that didn't work. 

Being the rational mother I am, I sat my children down (all girls by the way) and started shaving heads.  While you may think this is harsh, several months of treatment and hours of nit removal didn't work; what would you have done?  We couldn't afford to go to the doctor for a prescription type and the doctor told us that our youngest couldn't use it; we were stuck.

I didn't shave them bald, just short enough so that the nits had nothing to stick too and when using the nit comb, the nits were found easily.

As a mom, I was devastated.  I didn't want to cut all my girls beautiful hair, but I knew it would grow back.  Now my children weren't so understanding.  My younger two at the time didn't care, but the older two actually got mad at me and thought I did it to hurt them.  Oh, I was so upset.

We got through that though, their hair grew back and we accomplished what I had set out to do; I GOT RID OF THE LICE and the NIT MONSTER!

 

 

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