I’ve dealt with it twice this year, once with the 4yo and once with the 6yo (it seems to go around school and preschool pretty regularly). It’s unpleasant, but manageable. I live in NZ, and have used a “natural” product called MOOV head lice solution – it has a minty smell that’ll knock you off your feet, but my kids tolerated it fine (I think the main component in it is eucalyptus oil). With it, you treat their hair once a week for 3 weeks. For the first few days, I nit-picked compulsively – at least twice a day – which cut down on the lice and eggs dramatically. We also did the usual of washing all the bed linens, any coats and jackets they’d been wearing, and putting their pillows on a hot cycle in the dryer. I should say too that for my child with curly hair, I found it much easier to nitpick when his hair was wet. It all sucks (and makes you compulsively scratch your own head for weeks), but it’s just one of the many indignities that children bring into your life…

I heard that lice don’t like heads with hairspray on, but luckily I’ve never had to test it.

I know it sounds gross but with the breakout we had on Thanksgiving I covered her head in mayonnaise in the morning, put a shower cap over it, and then didn’t rinse out until night. I got lucky that I have a kid who doesn’t like mayonnaise so I didn’t have to worry about her trying to eat it. I also through all the stuffed animals in a plastic bag and kept them in the basement for 2 weeks, washed every single article of clothing in the house (along with all the bedding, bought some sort of bedding spray for lice, and vacuumed every inch of the furniture and carpet. She also went through and extensive amount of combing. I got very OCD on it and it was gone in 24 hrs. I still check every week so that if it happens again I can catch it early. You can pretty much say that lice drove me insane.

I am absolutely freaking out after finding lice in my daughter’s hair. I was doing her hair this morning and saw one moving around. I bought an electric comb and I’m pretty happy with it. It makes a buzzing noise that stops when it finds a louse and it also kills them. I have combed her hair three times today, the first time I sectioned it and combed really thouroughly and found about 50 different sized lice. The next time I found 4 and the time after that only one. It only kills the adults, not the nits (eggs). I also bought a conditioner treament and comb that removes the eggs.

The great thing about the electric comb is that you can use it to detect lice. So it seems that my other daughter and I don’t have any, so it definitely isn’t as contagious as I thought. The comb was expensive, but I think it is a good investment and I’ll use it regularly to check for lice and give myself some peace of mind.