Scratching Your Head ~ A Lice Public Service Announcement

A couple days ago Holden told me he had to go to the office and have his hair checked.

That only meant one thing.

Rhymes with rice.

I guess it’s “going around”.

And it is NOT fun. You can read about our experience a couple years ago when Elliott got it in Kinder here, here & here.

Sucked. Big time.

I did A LOT of Googling and researching. Maybe too much.

I did read in several places that good ‘ol inexpensive Suave coconut shampoo and conditioner is good for PREVENTING lice ~ not killing or treating. Apparently lice do not share my love of all things coconut….something in the scent they do not care for.

Needless to say, we have been using this combo for the past year and a half. Like a buck fifty at Wal-mart or Target. If you’re not a fancy schmancy salon only haircare purchaser, you may want to start using this on your kiddos.

On another note: the school gave me a flier for a lice treatment place in the LA area. I became desperate and thought about spending money to get our household lice-free once and for all {Elliott was the only one that got it, thank you Lord. I was a maniac with washing sheets and blankets and banishing Pillow Pets to the garage in a trash bag} Anyhoo, I decided to call our insurance to see if this would be something that they would cover {flier said that their services were covered by insurance, but I never trust fliers}. Our insurance said that this would NOT be covered since it is not a medical facility. That ended that because I also went to Yelp and found that these places did not have glowing reviews and that they were very expensive. I did not want to spend Jay’s hard earned dinero on getting nits out of our daughter’s hair. So I persevered. I did some more Googling and found that a comb at Walgreen’s came highly recommended. After spending DAYZZZ picking nits, I finally went and purchased this comb…

The minute your child is sent home with lice, get this comb. The one with the super long teeth took the nits out beautifully. I almost had it bronzed. Almost.

I’m not going to go into the lice killing shampoos. You can be the judge if you want to use them or go a more holistic route. I called our pediatrician and he said any of the national brands were OK. I ended up getting the generic Wal-mart brand that was comparable. It definitely murdered the actual lice, but then I started reading about how toxic these shampoos are. I freaked and then used a couple natural remedies as back up to make sure the bugs were kaput. {you can read about them in the links above}

*****

With Halloween coming and all the dress up play dates our littles partake in, I thought I’d pass along this info. I’m sure somewhere little Johnny will want to try on little Bobby’s scary mask, right? Just something to be aware of because you do not want your Halloween to be full of tricks. Trust me.

In speaking with several mamas at school, they were not aware of the coconut shampoo & conditioner secret.

That is it for my public service announcement! I’m here if you have any further questions. 😉