How to…Deal with head lice

By Mat Bell

Headline and nits are unavoidable once your pride and joy starts mixing with the masses at nursery and school. There are plenty of nit killers on the market but treatments are very expensive, and more natural methods are better tried first.

It is important to routinely check your child’s hair, and your school or nursery may insist you notify them if your child catches them.

Children may find head lice a stigma, or even frightening, so tell your child about how you had them when you went to school. Try using an informal word to describe them, parents we asked used the following: Biddies, Monsters, insects, Dinosaurs or Nits.

Before going straight for the chemical kill, keeping an eye on your child’s hair and dealing with them when they are first found using this method is much better. If you want to be totally eco-friendly then use a totally natural conditioner instead.

1    Brush the hair and have a quick check to see if there is any unwanted guests. Use of an electronic comb to find out how bad the child is invested is helpful. This electronic comb also zaps the lice and stuns or kills them.

2   If you have found headlice buy the cheapest hair conditioner you can find – The supermarkets own bargain brand is fine. Plaster it onto dry hair then brush with a normal comb or brush to stop the tears because of the knots.

3  Sit the child down with a towel around their shoulders on a chair that you can walk around and run a nit comb through a handful of hair at a time. Metal toothed combs don’t scratch as much as plastic ones. Rinse the comb in a bowl of water after each comb and check you are not putting the lice you got out back in.

4   Once you have combed all the conditioner out of the hair, pour the bowl of water in the sink with the plug slightly in but not fully so it will let the water out but not the headlice and nits. You can show your child what you have been doing and explain why.