Safety Tips: How to Avoid Lice
Posted on September 5, 2014
Hi!! Today I move from teen drivers to a discussion of head lice. In fact my younger daughter diagnosed herself with head lice in first grade due to a great school education session. Her head was itching. I had no idea what to do so I called several of my friends and was surprised to find out they all had personal experience as well.
Parents need to be prepared for back-to-school season as 85 percent of all school districts report at least one outbreak a year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that most of the 12 million cases occur in preschool and elementary-school-aged children.
Prevention is easier than treatment. Teach your children:
- Avoid head to head contact during play at school and other acivities including sports, camp, sleep overs.
- Do not share clothing including hats, scarves, coats. Tell your kids to put their coats in their lockers and not on the ground with everyone elses.
- Never share hats, combs, pillows, ear buds or helmets. Keep long hair up in a pony tail or braid.
- Do not lie on beds, couches, pillow or carpets are share stuffed animals that have been recently in contact with an infected person.
- Do weekly head checks. Sit under a bright light and comb through tiny sections of the hair — focusing on the “hot spots,” such as the back of neck, behind ears and the part lines. Nits (eggs) will be grayish in color and glued 1/4 inch from the top of the hair shaft. If it is hard to remove, it is a nit and not dandruff.
Treatment:
- If you find nits or lice, do not panic.
There are effective shampoo treatments, called pediculocides available over the counter and by prescription. They typically come with a nit comb for “nit picking.”
Be sure to let the school know and keep your child home until they are lice free.
Everyone in the household needs to be checked.
Machine wash and dry clothing, bed linens, and other items that an infested person wore or used during the 2 days before treatment using the hot water (130°F) laundry cycle and the high heat drying cycle. Clothing and items that are not washable can be dry-cleaned OR sealed in a plastic bag and stored for 2 weeks.
Happily I was able to eradicate my daughter’s (and her sister’s) head lice in one day and they were checked by the school again before they returned to class.
It’s the end of school safety week -don’t forget to take my quiz to see how much you learned. Join me next week when we talk about healthy sleep.
Take my weekly quiz and get your free reward. I call this my Dr. Laurie mini-(yet very useful) first aid kit. It’s a pretty handy thing to have on hand. But, hurry before they are all gone!
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