Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/26/the-lousy-lives-of-lice.html
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The nerd in me loves this kinda stuff. The parent in me is horrified. The pediatrician is just nodding and saying “Yup.”
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I’ve never seen lice in real life. I’m in no hurry to either. It’s intentionally been left off my bucket list.
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Really? I grew up in a small, poor, rural community, and only a handful of kids at the school ever got headlice in the 13 years I was there.
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I grew up with 6 siblings in public school and none of us had it either. Outbreaks are far more common now (at least in the US) and the little monsters are much more resistant.
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It really only takes one child living in filthy conditions to constantly re-infect a school. It wasn’t in my kid’s grade, but a couple of years ago the school was having monthly outbreaks and eventually they traced it to one kid who’s parents weren’t able to clear the lice from their house. They also had trouble accepting help because some of the people in the house were not legal. I don’t know what happened to that child after that unfortunately.
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Speaking of lice:
A feeder of lice was a job in interwar and Nazi-occupied Poland, in the city of Lwów at the Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology. It involved serving as a source of blood for lice, a typhus vector, which could then be used to develop vaccines against the disease.
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It’s always entertaining to blame the poor. Bonus points for undocumented immigrants - or, really, any kind of immigrants. I’m pretty sure the actual data does not support this.
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This. Several letters home when the kid was in kindergarten through 5th grade.
Luckily he never had any.
I personally don’t worry anymore as shaving my head isn’t much more of a change than my usual haircut. No hair, no lice.
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Ever seen a group of kids huddled around a smart phone, tablet, computer? All looking at something or playing a game. With all of their heads touching in the circle. This is the biggest way they transmit from person to person.
Second graders are particularly prone to this.
With resistant bugs, getting them out is labor and time intensive. Plus, a little miss can create a recurrence.
Schools (and people) way over react to it though. There’s no reason to keep kids home.
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Back in the 70s/80s, my public schooling didn’t include a personal study of lice, but my mom, a nursery school teacher, wasn’t so lucky. As the head teacher of the school, she very quickly implemented a mandatory lice check at the beginning of each semester, but we always had nit combs and anti-lice shampoo in the medicine cabinet. These were almost all WASPy middle class, so the arguments with the parents I overheard were all full of “surely you must be mistaken,” "Not my child, and the old favorite, “what child gave it to mine!” It sometimes took a mention of an obligation to report such infestations to authorities to get the parents to take action, they were so in denial, and repeat incidents before the family accepted they were the source.
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Lice ain’t nice.
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Can confirm. I was in grade school in the 60s. Nobody had lice. It was just unheard of.
When my sister (5 years younger) was in grade school, one kid got lice. It caused a huge shitstorm. Multiple letters home to the parents, etc.
When my kids were in grade school, it was treated like “Meh, it happens”.
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Most of the insecticidal treatments are bordering on useless now, but we use an old-timey technique that is still quite effective. Paul Mitchell makes a product called “Cholesterol” that is in essence a very thick conditioning crème rinse. Rub it into the kids hair thoroughly at bedtime and rinse it out in the morning. It smothers the little beasties. Traditionally this was done with something like Crisco, but that is a bear to wash out the next day. This stuff rinses out easily. Then soak the head in 1/2 strength vinegar and go to it with a lice comb. Works much better than the miticides and has minimal risk of side effects.
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See! It’s them newfangled electronics!
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my daughter never brought home lice, however we did have a couple of rounds with pin-worms. And since the treatment involves everybody in the house taking the drug - thank you so much daughter. And to boot the dose depended on your body weight:
Daughter - one teaspoon
Mom - 2 teaspoons
Dad - bottle and a half
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I have five kids in school and the three youngest daughters just went through four months of lice. They share beds and pillows sometimes, so it kept getting passed back and forth.
I tried everything: lice shampoo, lice mousse, even a comb that zaps the lice with electricity. The infestation finally ended after we used a prescription lice shampoo.
Nasty stuff.
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As @anon29537550 mentioned, most of the chemical solutions no longer work. You need to physically remove them.
Conditioner (preferably white, it’s helps to see) and nit combing. Apply conditioner, rub in and let sit for at least 10 minutes, then nit comb. Every other day for 3 weeks or more. Plan for an hour a head.
It’s a huge pain and a ton of time.
There are places that professionally comb heads too. Plan on about 45 minutes a head with them, 3 in two hours perhaps. They’re not cheap. But, they they’re much better at it, since they do it all the time, then someone just starting themselves. They’ll give you a huge head start and make it less likely that missing a few will mean they’re not eliminated.
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This exercise will also give you a whole new perspective on the etymology of the term “nit-picking.” It is an exhausting and frustrating exercise which we would gladly have outsourced had it been an option in our area when my daughter got them. As it played out, it was merely further evidence that my long-suffering wife deserves to be nominated for sainthood, or at least a peace prize or something. 
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We went through two rounds. What worked was the constant vigilance and the combing every other night.
On a side note, a month or so later, we spent a vacation at a lakeside cottage, and my daughter said that she said she thought the lice was back. Turns out a week at the beach swimming instead of bathing can make your head a bit itchy too.
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