Hi, I am a father that has my daughter every weekend. My daughter constantly arrives at my house with severe head lice. Her mother is blaming the school, which is fair enough but my concern is that her mother is neglecting her by not going through her hair every evening. I have spoken to her mother about it and it gets better for a couple of weeks then its back to normal. I have reported her to social services over a different matter and again it got better for a few weeks and then back to normal. I cant take my daughter anywhere when I pick her up, but I spend 2 hours of my time with her treating her hair. Its starting to affect my relationship with my partner. Is there anything I can do? Any advice would be appreciated!
...in her defence I think there is some sort of epidemic going on, both my grandsons have had to be treated twice by me in the last couple of months...in fact I treated everybody! If the mother isn't treating everyone in the household they could be re infecting.
You can buy spray in conditioner that prevents them infesting the hair. If it were me I would probably accept that the mother isn't on top of it and next time you have her treat her hair ( I find Hedrin Once very effective). And then spray on the preventative lotion and send a bottle home with her, making sure her mother knows to continue to use it regularly. It can be very tedious and time consuming combing through every evening, whereas a quick spray is perhaps a much easier option and one that she may then keep up. Here's a link to the one I've seen but there are probably others
My daughter gets them ALL the time, we treat, comb, condition, they just don't give up!
I've given up on treatment, we lather conditioner on an comb with a Nitty Gritty (best you can buy apparently) comb. We then dry an straighten the hair with straighteners with in an inch of it's life to burn any eggs. Seems to be doing the job.
She's such a cuddly little girl and always has her head next to someone else, tying te hair up for school in two plaits helps too.
....it's difficult, my 3 year old grandson just will not tolerate his hair being combed (he's now had a crew cut for the summer!) but my 8 year old grandson, being that much older will sit still and put up with it!
Touch wood they have been lice free for a few weeks.
My youngest daughter always arrived with them when my children were still living with their mother. She expected my older daughter to sort it out rather than do it herself so they were never going to get on top of it.
I'm not sure what the treatments are like now, but then (about 10 years ago), the stuff that was generally available was pretty much the same chemicals used in sheep dip, and I decided that I really didn't want to be using such chemicals on her, so I used the comb and hair conditioner method, doing it daily for the first few days, and then twice weekly (if they were still with me) to make sure there was no recurrence. Took a good hour each time. Once they came to live with me, I did this again, and once she was rid of them, they never came back - I suspect that my ex probably had them herself, and certainly the bed linen was rarely washed at her house.
Lice was the curse of our lives when our daughter was at primary school. It didn't make things any better when I heard one of the parents, with a child in the same class declare they would not do anything about their child's infestation as they didn't see why they should pay for treatment and should get it free. The teacher was not too happy with it either.
It did give me an idea for a project with my daughter. We had bought her a videoscope for her birthday and had been looking at different things in it. So I decided to get one of the lice and dissected it and put the different parts into slides for her. I also put a live one under the videoscope so we could watch it. My daughter being who she is could not wait to tell everyone and show them. Including at school.
A couple of days later the teacher told me the parents who had refused to treat the child had complained as their child had kicked off and would scream and cry until they treated them. Personally I used to love the response of adults rather than the kids.
Teacher should have pointed out that treating them for headlice is free (well apart from the cost of a comb and some conditioner) - all it takes is a bit of effort, and personally I much prefer that method to the pretty nasty chemicals that are used (I think some are the same chemicals as sheep dip, or certainly were in the past) in lice treatments.
hey same scenario happen with us, my 3 year old grandson simply won't endure his hair being brushed (he's currently had a team trim for the mid year!) however my 8 year old grandson, being that substantially more seasoned will sit still and endure it!
Touch wood they have been sans lice for fourteen days.
Regards Ethan wilson