Just in time for Pesach – the plague of lice

Head lice are more common here than the US (probably because insistence on kids going to school lice-free isn’t strictly enforced), and knowing that, I’ve kept a watchful eye on everyone since our move.  And it’s consistently been fine.

But recently when all the kids were sick for a while, it wasn’t on my radar to think about this and I overlooked one child scratching his head, something I would have usually jumped on immediately.  It wasn’t until two weeks after that that I checked the kids last week, and I saw signs of lice in three of them.  It was actually amazing that so few of them had it, being that it spreads so quickly and easily when children put their heads next to each other.

Of the three kids who had signs of lice, two had a very small amount that was easily taken care of.  The third was so heavily infested that I felt almost hopeless for the first few hours I was working on him on day one.  But when I started on day two, there was such an obvious difference thanks to all I did on the first day, and I’m happy to say that the issue is now resolved!

Since I lived here when my oldest four children were young, I had to deal with lice on an ongoing basis, so I’ve developed my approach to handling it that has been pretty effective.  There are many tips available about how to get rid of lice, but I’m going to share what I do.

Firstly, never use the poisonous lice shampoos like RID.  They are dangerous, and even carry warnings on them not to use them too frequently.  Not only that, I don’t think they’re very effective!

I’ve seen suggestions about using vinegar, mayonnaise, Listerine and other things to wash out the hair and smother the lice.  But unless it makes you feel like you’re doing something, it’s just extra work without much added benefit.

The first critical step is to make sure there are no live bugs in your child’s hair.  I have a two pronged approach to this – I check manually and I use a fine toothed metal lice comb to thoroughly comb through their hair. (I bought the least expensive one available at the pharmacy – 35 shekels.  Don’t bother with the cheap plastic ones, which don’t work at all.)  I absolutely don’t rely on lice combs on their own, since I used to see how much they missed, but if you use them regularly and well, they’re probably enough.  It’s like someone speeding – the cops might not catch you the first few times, but eventually you’ll get ticketed.  So if you  keep combing you’ll eventually catch the lice even though the comb will miss a few times.

It’s helpful to condition the hair well before combing.  (Ideally, combing their hair after every bath and shower should be done proactively to prevent lice in the first place – I wasn’t doing this, but now it’s been instituted as standard protocol for everyone.)  I comb firmly against the scalp, to get off anything that might be there.  Lice live close to the scalp, so that’s where you’ll generally find them, not further down the hair shaft.  I do this every day or two once for about two or three weeks if I see a sign of lice, since new eggs can hatch and then mature after the point you think there are no bugs left.  The newly hatched eggs are tiny – about the same as a speck of sand.  You’d have to look closely to even realize that it’s a louse and even then you might be hard pressed to believe it!  They don’t reach sexual maturity until 5 – 10 days, so you don’t have to worry about them laying eggs until then.

After being sure that there are no live bugs, you’ll need to attend to the removal of the nits.  This is a painstaking job (though I personally find it gratifying and don’t mind it), which is where the term nitpicking comes from!  A nit looks like a tiny teardrop shaped bump on a hair – you can tell it’s a nit and not dandruff by touching it.  A nit is firmly attached to a hair, and the only way to get it off is to pull it off each hair individually.   Dandruff can be flicked away. (A couple of kids had dandruff, and I asked them to do a vinegar treatment to get rid of dandruff before I checked them to make it easier for me – I didn’t want to look at every fleck on their heads.)

Nits are different colors depending on their age, so based on this you tell what’s been freshly laid and what’s oldest and about to hatch – white when just laid, getting darker brown and finally black right before hatching.  This can be of practical value to know when there are so many nits that you give priority to those that are the oldest – this is what I did with ds over the two day period I was cleaning him out; I took out the darkest nits and left the lighter ones for the next day.  I know some people rely on combs to get the nits out, but I really don’t think they work for nit removal – what I think you’re relying on is that the nits that hatch will eventually be caught by the comb.

Look particularly behind the ears and by the nape of the neck for both lice and nits.  For some reason, lice seem to love these locations.  I give these areas extra checks and go through the hairs in this area extra carefully.

A couple of myths to debunk:

– You don’t have to disinfect every corner of your house when a child gets lice.  The things people do in this area don’t do anything but make themselves crazy  – the vaccuming, bleaching, etc.  Lice need the head of a host to live, and nits certainly can’t hatch once they’re removed.  I kill every louse that I remove if it’s big enough; the small ones go into a container of water while I comb and then are flushed down the toilet. I wouldn’t drop the nits onto a pillowcase 🙂 but you can do what you want with them; it really doesn’t matter.

– Lice do jump.  I’ve read that people say they only can crawl from one head to another, and it’s true that heads need to be next to each other.  But I’ve repeatedly seen lice jump several inches when I’ve been combing them out.

Prevention: comb out regularly, use a rosemary essential oil/shampoo on your hair (lice don’t like the smell), and if you see a child scratch his head, immediately check them.

I’m happy to be going into Pesach having dealt with this, so that when we talk at the seder about the plague of lice, it will be past history!

If you’ve ever had to deal with head lice, what are the tips that have worked for you?

Avivah

11 thoughts on “Just in time for Pesach – the plague of lice

  1. Thanks for all your detailed advice!
    We use a metal lice comb from the pharmacy called ASSY2000 (I think it cost around 40 shekels) and it really helps to catch the live bugs and also to squish the nits. We also use a shampoo (based on the Polygonum plant and extracts of garlic, parsley and Daucus Carota) and a rosemary conditioner sold at the pharmacy from a company called Moraz galilee medical herbs (8.5 floz each bottle for a total cost of 40 shekels). I only end up needing to use one treatment, so it’s a blessing when you have young ones who can’t handle things sitting on their heads for the required 10-15 minutes the shampoo has to stay on (I try to buy time and distract them with toys or stories in the bath while it sits on their head, before washing it out and then combing their hair again).

  2. I always have the kids use the conditioners scented with what lice are not supposed to like. Haven’t had an active case in the 10 years I’ve been doing that.

  3. We’ve used vinegar with great success because I’ve read that it dissolves the nit glue. Just soak the hair and comb out. It usually takes one application or two at most and I’ve noticed that the pestilence doesn’t reoccur for at least six months. So cheap and effective!

    1. Likewise, except that I can’t “apply” it to my kids’ hair…so I dip the comb in a bowl (the only thing I use disposable for!) between each swipe. Neither I nor my kids have the patience for me to nitpick, so I simply comb twice a day for 10 days or so…the chemical stuff I don’t use has to be reapplied after 10 days to catch new ones, so I figure 10 days of combing should accomplish the same thing. (For the record, I never find anything after about day 3.) So far, so good…and my kids don’t seem to be attractive to the lice…we only get it around once a year, and only one kid at a time!

  4. In seminary, I was itchy and reached on my head and plucked off a louse. I found a total of 3 lice and got myself a metal lice comb and threw out the silly plastic one that came with the poisonous nit remover stuff my mother insisted I bring from America with me. I continually combed it and had my eim bayis check me. It really was not that big a deal, although I had a roommate who completely freaked out. I think I caught it in the early stages, thankfully.

    I also had nits in second grade in America, and I remember feeling humiliated that my mother made me stand there in my underwear checking me. She probably still felt like I was little, but I felt older and it was a complete breach of my modesty/privacy…and there was no reason I couldn’t wear my clothing!! Probably no one else in my family remembers that, but things like this can be traumatic for the one who it is done to…

  5. The green rosemary stuff from the local pharmacy works like a charm each time. The lice was hardly recognizable until I “pour” those green stuff on the hair, and then started noticing head lice for the first time in my life! Without it, the lice camouflage well.

    Did you also ever notice that there are lots of wild or maybe cultivated rosemary bushes in your area?

    Yes, lice do jump. They jumped from my head into my plate of food at one time during dinner! Even covering one’s hair doesn’t prevent one from getting lice.

    Why lice is more common in Israel, is perhaps due to the weather and density of population.

  6. If you buy your shampoo way in advance you can just take a little out of the bottle and insert 3-4 sprigs of rosemary. More for bigger bottles of course, Close the bottle and leave a few weeks, 6 weeks or more is best. The oils infuse into the shampoo. The more simple and natural the shampoo the better this works.

    1. Hi, Rachel, welcome! Thanks for this amazing tip – I’m definitely going to try it. It sounds nice and simple, just the kind of tip that I like best!

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