While you thought that you are done with the most dreaded jobs of child rearing — diaper duty, potty training, establishing good eating habits – your kid returns from school one day, itching her scalp, throwing tantrums and generally feeling irritable. While you wonder what’s gone wrong, a closer inspection of your child’s scalp gives you the answer. Your child’s head has been invaded by those small, minute, tiny insects that promise enough nuisance and irritation while they stay put – head lice.
What are head lice?
Head lice are parasites which live and reproduce in the human scalp. Though they can take refuge in the head of an adult but they are more common in children. They have the capacity to make one extremely irritable and frustrated with their presence though they don’t spread any disease as such.
Lice can be present in your child’s head either in form of
- Eggs: They appear to be oval in shape sticking to the hair close to the scalp. These eggs or nits hatch within nine to 10 days.
- Baby lice or nymphs: They are much smaller in size compared to adult lice but create chaos as much as adult lice.
- Adult lice: They are smaller than sesame seeds and can live upto 30 days in the scalp but die within three days if they stay out of the scalp.
How do head lice spread?
Head lice spreads from person to person by close contact or through direct hair to hair contact. They cannot hop or fly but can crawl very fast and go from one scalp to the other. Other indirect ways in which head lice can spread are:
- By sharing personal things like combs, hair bands, headscarves, hats etc.
- By using common items like bed sheets, pillows, towels etc with someone who has lice on the scalp.
How does lice affect one’s wellbeing?
Though they don’t spread any disease, they still manage to create a lot of menace. Being parasites they depend on food from the human scalp and suck miniscule amounts of blood from the scalp for their nourishment and survival. Also the warmth in the head and the hair gives a perfect environment for them to grow and live. Though they don’t hurt while they suck from the scalp, but they can make the process irritable leading to incessant scratching. Excessive scratching can then lead to scalp infection in children too.
What are the signs that indicate the presence of lice in the head?
The most common symptoms of lice infestation are
- Constant itching
- Soreness in the scalp
- Scalp infection in extreme cases
- General irritability
Sometimes kids might not show any of these symptoms in the start and lice can house in the head for a fortnight without causing any discomfort, while they keep multiplying in numbers. To make sure that your child has lice infection, try to find a live louse in the head. Sit under a bright light, preferably under the sun, comb your baby’s hair neatly and make sections out of it. If there is lice infestation on the scalp, you can spot those tiny insects very close near the scalp clinging to the hair.
How can head lice be treated?
There are various ways in which head lice can be treated:
Wet combing: In this method wet the hair, ideally wash with a mild shampoo and apply a coat of conditioner to trap the lice in the hair. Next, using a lice comb, in which the gap between two teeth would be around 0.2 or 0.3 mm apart, comb off the nits and the lice. Make sure you kill the lice once they are out of the scalp. But this is a tedious process and has to be repeated several times for total eradication of lice. Wash off the conditioner and re-comb again till your little one’s scalp is lice-free. Repeat the entire procedure after five or seven days for better results.
OTC products: There are various OTC products available to choose from to kill nits and lice. Talk to your doctor while picking one and follow the instructions carefully while applying the same. If your see that lice are still present after two or three days of using the medication probably the medicine isn’t suiting your child. Consult the child’s doctor. Do not experiment on your own with medication that could be loaded with chemicals, as those can adversely affect your baby’s scalp.
Oil and combing treatment: For ages this procedure is thought to be an effective one but is time consuming. Use coconut or olive oil to massage the entire head and scalp and take small sections of the hair and comb them. Apply more oil if needed. Oiling and combing done alternatively gets the nits and lice out of the scalp. But repeat the process once in every four days till you are sure that your baby’s head is devoid of lice.
How can one prevent the occurrence of head lice?
There is a common misconception that head lice appears only in those kids or people with bad hygiene, but the reality is that lice can be present in the most clean and hygienic kids or adults too. Here is something that can be done to prevent the incidence of spreading lice within the family members:
- After you treat for lice, make sure you do the same for the entire family to prevent spreading the nits to others.
- Wash all the washable items like pillow covers, bed sheets, blankets, caps etc to ensure that no lice remains even after the clean-up drive from the scalp. Remember they can crawl fast and get into a person’s scalp quickly.
- Wash the combs thoroughly either with hot water or with antiseptic liquids to make sure that the insects are not present on them.
- It is difficult to limit your child’s interaction with the others who have lice already. So better be vigilant and act soon if you see your child itching his or her scalp or being irritated due to the lice infestation.
- Regular hair wash and combing can help you ensure that the scalp is free of nits.
You may also like to read:
- Decode your baby’s motions
- Which of these 9 reasons are making your baby cry?
- Is your baby teething? Here’s what you should expect
- 10 ways to keep your baby’s eyes safe
- Try these tips to put your baby to sleep
- 5 reasons why crying is good for your baby
- How to manage your baby’s colic
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Head lice – tips to deal with the problem
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