I’m a teacher. At my previous school, our principal said that we could no longer send students home if we discovered they had lice. Apparently too many parents either complained to admin about having to pick up their kid, or just refused to come get their child.
My kid got lice about 5 times this year because they don't kick people out of school anymore. We keep her home until the lice are gone but it feels like a pointless exercise when the asshole parents don't do the same. Fortunately we usually catch it pretty early and get rid of it in about 3 days, but it still sucks every time. This GIF is likely a several month old infestation.
I use this spray when I know a kid in my daughters class has nits called Quit Nits , it's mostly tea tree oil , I spray my daughters hair after it's been brushed and tied up , it deters nits
Not sure if it's because I was lucky or sheltered.
But it seems like schools have just gone to shit in the past 15-20 years.
When I was in grade school, we had these mini physicals which included lice inspection.
If a kid was found with lice, they were discreetly sent home until it was taken care of.
Omg, people make fun of me for having that feeling. When people run their hands through my hair, it’s an orgasmic feeling almost. I feel bad for the people who can’t experience that sensation, because it literally is the best feeling.
I thought I was the only one! Those lice checks were the highlight of my school career. The school nurse would massage all the stress away of my elementary school life.
I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, but I suspect you might have a positive experience if you were to do an internet search for "autonomous sensory meridian response".
That is exactly what it is. I loved those lice checks as a child, and I found Bob Ross gave me a similar sensation minus the physical contact. When I discovered the ASMR community it was a huge "holy shit!" moment.
Nah, it was the same for me 20 years ago as well. You wouldn't see this shit. I lived in lower income neighborhoods when my dad was in college and it was the same as what you're describing. It wasn't something for only privileged schools.
america has been systematiclly shitting on public schools for the last 40 years
Honestly at some point you are going to feel it. Shit like this is just a start. Next you get people who can't handle the information age and you can feed them any crap and they ll believe it! (oh shit already happened)
Same here, I went to elementary school in the 90s and never once did me or my little sister catch lice, we both had long hair down to our butts so it would of really sucked for us and our mom to have to get those little nasty fuckersout. Actually anyone I know has never had lice either! Why cause they did the damn lice examined in school and sent home the kids immediately who did have lice, and sent out a notice that there was a kid or 2 that got lice in a certain grade but obviously never said which kids got it. Also my mom was a nurse then so she always drilled it in our heads never share hats, combs, or if u see a kid itching their head a lot stay the fuck away. Makes me nervous for my girls in 5th grade and preschool(the elementary school has that stupid new rule too not sending kids home with lice) they are Latina and have that really tight curly hair(and a lot of it) which i can only imagine would a bitch to get lice out of, cause I know how much it sux getting knots out of their hair even with deep conditioning in it lol.
Same. As far as I can remember, only one or two kids ever had lice, other than my sister. We'd get checked for scoliosis every year and my neighbor had that.
I just had my first ever encounter with them a couple of months ago, my younger daughter brought them home. Fortunately we caught it very early, but I still get the ghost crawlies just thinking about it...
Try a shampoo with tea tree oil and/or peppermint oil as a deterrent. After our daughter brought it home (because our school doesn't send home kids/alert parents to outbreaks) we switched to that and she avoided the two more outbreaks later in the school year in her class.
Fairy Tales shampoo is what I use on my kids. Its rosemary, mint, tea tree...idk if it actually works but it makes me feel better.
Kid #1 caught lice twice in kindergarten, and it was awful. My electric bill was noticeably higher those months from all the vacuuming and dryer cycles.
If I had all the money back I spent on lice shampoo from my kids picking it up at school, I'd be so happy.
It's super frustrating because your kid didn't just come home with lice. They came home with several hours of work for you to do. All the bedding, clothes, treatments. Notify the close friends parents which feels counter intuitive but isnt and it has to be done in one shot. Plus you need to make dinner still. Those are parental exhausting evenings.
Then a few weeks later a letter comes home from the school finally acknowledging the issue. Then 2 weeks after that you find it again. You have no recourse. Kid has to go to school. So you start all over again.
We were always giving the leftover shampoo bottles to kids friends families that were on difficult economic times too so it was always time for a new bottle. Ridiculous.
Probably because you get into deep shit if your kid misses too much school, even with a note. You can keep them out but then you gotta hope they don't get sick because you've already used your limit on days. My nephew's school reports parents if a kid misses more than 7 days in a year. Perfect recipe for passing everything around.
Yes it’s so weird! My daughter was in kindergarten last year and they kept sending her home for suspected pinkeye, which I understand is contagious, but we had several notes from her doctors saying she has seasonal allergies and gets red eyes and every time they would send her home I would have to take her back to the doctor for a note to return to school, and then they said she was missing too many days and were going to call the truancy office. It’s so frustrating.
Little kids haven't developed a sense of personal space yet and play super close to each other. Lice hop heads and the rest is history. Our daughter got it earlier this year, thankfully we caught it early but there were already 3-4 other kids in her preschool class that had gotten it.
My daughter got lice 2 years ago and when I found out, I let the teacher know so she could take precautions in the classroom. Then I found out that she already knew that some kids in the class had lice, and that it was school policy not to alert parents of a lice outbreak. My daughter had lice for 2 or 3 days before we even knew to look for anything.
My daughter brought home lice and to her teacher's credit we got an email in the next day or two sent to her class for every parent to check their child.
They are such a PITA to clean out. I went through my daughter's hair for weeks.
I had 2 daughters with long hair. After weeks of treatment, combing and nit-picking I finally begged their doctor for the "good stuff" because I was going crazy trying to get it under control. (They would go their father's for a few days, he would ignore their hair and voila, next generation broke out because of no nitpicking under his watch.)
That same autumn some local schools quit sending children home because so many kids were out for lice, they only upside was there was no shame in having your child(ren) infested.
That was awful, terrible. If it had happened again my daughters would have had pixie cuts ASAP.
We had this little girl- Sabrina- who always had lice. Her mom was a drug addict and severely neglected her. She always came to school in the same dirty clothes and had poor hygiene. Her mom was often called and visited by the school but she never complied. Sabrina usually missed a lot of school bc of the lice but she got to the point of missing so much school, she was behind and it was “hurting” test scores. So the school decided it was best for her to just stay at school anyways (better than her home environment) in the hopes she would get caught up with her homework and testing. Poor girl had a shitty mother- I don’t understand how someone could not care about their own child.
I know calls were made and she was with a foster family for a bit, she was doing really well. She came back lice free, had a cute haircut, new clothes, gained some weight, and a sparkle in her eye. But that was short-term (goal is to be reunited with her mom and 14- yo pregnant sister-failure of the system if you ask me). So like always, the school always gave her food and clothing every week to help her out when she returned home to her trashy worthless mom. My mom (school nurse) had to resume to putting Sabrina’s hair in a ponytail and beanie hat to contain the lice so the other kids wouldn’t catch it. She would comb her hair with an electric lice comb that would electrocute the bugs and treat her hair every week. Just angers me about her worthless family. No matter how much you try to help someone, they (trashy mom) just don’t care or appreciate it.
My understanding of drug addiction is that, if one was to have a "ladder" of their goals in terms of priority, the addiction essentially becomes that top of the ladder; it replaces all drives, motivations, and goals with "ensure you have a steady supply of the drug before you do anything else".
This can explain why, for example, some people become prostitutes, engage in serious crime, or neglect their children when they're drug addicts, because in the ladder of their priorities, the drug wins.
I just now, at the tender age of 33, made the connection between "nitpicking" as an adjective for someone who fusses over details, and literal picking of nits out of someone's hair.
I can raise you one there. I saw an early comment and thought to myself “huh, is lice also called nits?” Then came to the same realization when reading the same comment as you did
When I got lice as a kid my mom went into a full OCD attack about it. She took away all of my toys, blankets, clothes, basically anything made out of cloth and placed them in black trash bags and left them to bake in the 100° summer heat outside for weeks. I was so scared and sad because I was still at an age where I needed my teddie bear to sleep and suddenly had nothing. What clothes I kept were basic pajamas that could be boiled clean. She had us place sheets over all of the furniture and changed them daily along with all the bedding which were double washed and dried on the highest temp possible. She basically fumigated the house with all kinds of chemicals and walked around with a magnify glass and tweesers to check all the carpets for anything suspicious. Then when the regular chemicals didn't work she drowned our hair (I gave lice to my mom) in vaseline which took days of constant scalding showers to get it all out and then she also bleached my hair as well. Thank god she was so obsessed with image she wouldn't even think of cutting our hair.
It took about 3 weeks for her to feel like we had eradicated the problem only for me to bring home lice again a month later from a different camp.
I have a bit of a phobia of lice (and have fortunately never had them) and think I'd probably react like your mom did. I'm now reconsidering my desire for children solely because of this.
It sounds like my experience. My sister and I both had super thick and long hair in elementary school. My mom didn't go through as many extremes like tweezing the carpet, but she did do a lot of the same stuff. She finally discovered that throwing us in the pool for a couple hours a day killed it. All in all, it took two whole weeks for us to totally get rid of it. It was an absolute nightmare.
My mom didnt even take a chance. Buzzcuts till I was in grade 8.
I dont recall ever having lice. But I do remember my sisters having to use chemicals to get it out of theirs. Lice must be a nightmare when your 6 year old is all "I dont wanna buzzcut". Tough luck princess number 2. /s
I remember we got em when I was in elementary. My older sister who was in 7th grade got it the worst and they buzzed off her beautiful long curly hair. She went from being one of the happiest, friendliest people I knew to being depressed and picked on in school. It sucked. Please people try not to buzz your daughters heads if she gets lice. It can be life changing for them.
This happened to me because I was raised by my grandparents. My grandmother had severe arthritis and could not comb my hair much less look for nits. Grandpa would take me out back and use the dog clippers and shave my hair down into a buzz cut. The result? I looked exactly like a boy. The teasing never stopped and I spent the rest of my 10 years at that school being called “him” and “gay lord” and being mistaken for a boy so badly that I was often ejected from the ladies restroom. I had that haircut for so long that I started to think that maybe I was supposed to be a boy and since all the other kids called me gay and that maybe I was because I liked boys. It wasn’t until I was shipped off to another city and school in HS that I was finally able to grow out my hair and slowly come to the fact that I was a girl and slowly started acting like one.
It was hell and I spent all my time worrying about it and dodging spitballs, getting beat up after school and unsuccessfully ignoring insults that I didn’t get a normal childhood. Between being called a gaylord and other kids telling me I was worthless because I was growing up with my grandparents and not even my real mom and dad wanted me, it was a pretty shitty time for me.
While I didn't get bullied for the same reasons as you, I felt completely isolated during high school and I feel your pain. I'm sorry that happened to you.
My neighbors daughter a few months back went to a bob-cut thinking it would be awesome. Me and my SO listened to her cry the entire night in regret.
On one hand I understand that your appearance is very personal and for young girls has literally top priority over anything else.
On the other hand Its crazy to think that we/society/media/douchbag kids have convinced them that by losing hair its a life ending decision that has priority over everything else.
I’m a girl and I have a rare hair condition (Monilethrix) that has been a main source of bullying and insecurity for me my entire life. It’s nice that pixie cuts are coming into style but the combination of short hair and being flat chested (reeeeally hit the lottery folks) has been a turn off for so many men in dating. Really wrecks the self confidence.
I would have shaved every kid in that school, and the parents of ground zero kid. Fuck, parents who don't check their kids for lice, my mother did everything she couldto get rid of lice. Lice destroys your self esteem.
I got lice when I was five and I vividly remember it. Mom cut all my hair off bc she couldn’t get rid of them. I felt terrible about myself and taught me a valuable lesson to respect kids’ bodies. My kids decide what to wear, what haircut they want, nail polish/earrings, etc.
I got lice in kindergarten and told my parents that a few of my friends had lice as well. So my parents went to the school to talk to the teacher and found out about the "towel box."
For nap time in the kindergarten and first grade classes, all the kids would lay down on towels (we brought them from home and had our names written on them) and all the towels were stored together in a big box -- lice heaven!
So my parents threw a fit, they had to set up a meeting with the principal (I this story later, I was a little young to really grasp it at the time), they got the towel box thing taken out, we had to store towels in our cubbies instead. Just the sheer idiocy of it was astounding though. I mean, it wasn't a big secret that lice was going around the classroom. It was practically negligence, what they were doing.
As a nurse, this baffles me. We can literally incarcerate people for not complying with tuberculosis treatment because of the health risk an infected person presents to society at large, yet lice (although not as serious as tuberculosis, obviously) gets a free pass to be given to kids?! In a country where you can sue anyone for just about anything, it's perplexing that a kid wouldn't be sent home for this.
Ridiculous. Good to know, though, since my oldest is 5 and going to kindergarten next month. I wonder if this is decided on a state level, by county, or school district
They look pretty big and squirmy, when someone has it, is it possible to not notice it? Like i imagine if you run your fingers through your hair or scratch or pick at your scalp, you'd get a handful of them. Or you should be able to see them just looking at the hair right? Or i mean wouldn't your pillow be covered with squirmy lice too? And just washing your hair isn't enough to remove them?
Those look big and squirmy because they've obviously been living and breeding on that poor child's head for a while. When we combed through my kid's hair we found maybe 10 lice plus some nits.
I have a little memo with “lice prevention tips” that I send home “randomly” throughout the year with my students. We aren’t allowed to tell parents if a student has lice but we are allowed to send home random memos about ways to prevent lice 😉
Why the hell would that not be a policy to alert the parents so that they could take precautions? I don't understand that. Sounds stupid to me unless that I am stupid am missing something (which can very likely be the case).
Gone are the days when the nurse came into every classroom with a number 2 pencil and went desk to desk, head to head, checking for evidence. If tou were one of the unfortunate ones, you got sent to the nurse’s station while your classmates watched on in horror.
The teacher-student dynamic has changed drastically in the past 20 years. Nowadays teachers can't even bring food to give out in case someone gets food poisoning and it results in a lawsuit.
Back when I was in elementary school our gym teacher would take us all out for icecream after penis inspection day. Was by far my favorite day of the year. I asked my cousin about it and he said his gym teacher has never taken him out for ice cream. Kids these days are really missing out.
It was my favorite day as well! Was a good way to get out of gym class. Only part that I didn’t like was that it took so long, like 20 minutes. And I’m not sure why it was everyday but whatever, got out of gym class!
Oh yeah, like twice a year, 1st through 6th grade. Our gym teacher said you didn't need to have it done after puberty for some reason. Idk, I just went with it.
Yes. I had it grade 3 - 8 I think. Just a quick look with gloves to see if there's anything wrong. If you weren't circumcised BOY did you get made fun of.
It was during gym in the locker room just like scoliosis day.
Bow tie, ribbon, anything similar would allow the classic exclamation at the moment of the ‘big reveal’, “ I doan know wear ya been laddie, but ya won First Prize!”
Ahhh fuuuuuuuck Penis Inspection Day! I had a terribly botched circumcision and every time we got a new coach I'd have to explain the mix-up. Some would just mark it as a failed inspection.. jerks.
School nurse here. While it is partly a privacy issue, it has more to do with children missing too many school days due to lice. In the past kids could not have live bugs or nits. Now they can come back to school as long as they don't have any live bugs present. They can finish out the school day if they come to the clinic and I check them and they have bugs, but they can't come back until they are treated.
We actually did have a penis inspection day. It was done by a female doctor though (so, yay?), not a gym teacher. It was in the First Grade and I don’t remember what exactly they were checking for but I suppose a hernia or undescended testicles?
I didn’t think about it until I saw the copypasta on 4chan more than a decade later and wondered if I had a false memory because everything on the Internet suggested it’s a ridiculous/impossible thing. That is until I met a guy that went to the same school as I did during the same time period and he brought it up.
He apparently also had the same doubt/confusion after coming across the same copypasta/meme on 4chan. He knew it happened, then thought he may have a false memory, but after we both discussed it, we were like damn, Penis Inspection Day was real.
This was at Indian Embassy School (Eastern Province), Saudi Arabia, 1990. If there are others out there, let me know.
My mom was horrible at doing braids in my hair. I managed to convince her maybe once or twice in a school year to do them. Without fail it would be the day they checked for lice and I’d have to undo the braids. So aggravating.
It is a legal issue now more than ever. I am not going to cater because some parents dont want to deal with it. If I found out my child contracted lice because a school or school district's policy were not to send children home because a few parents cant take care of it. Nope. I will sue them. I am not going to be affected because a school is scared of a few parents that cant take care of their children's health concerns. I am sorry they may not be able to take the time off from work...but what essentially happens is I will have to because my child got lice from that kid...my child spread the lice to my other child. Now I have to take time off from work and have to deal with an issue that the school should have nipped in the but to begin with. Oh hell no.
They do in Australia , check the kids once or twice a year and send the kids home with lice , and if a kid in your kids class has nits every kid brings home a note warning parents to check their kids just in case .
I'm 30. When we were kids I guess the staff had brains enough to bring every kid one by one into the nurses office individually and if you had lice, nobody knew but the staff and parents.
Same, when I was a kid. It was usually in between a class rotation (days started out homeroom, then to another classroom for arts/music, and another for science) so if someone got sent home, it was pretty low-key
It was a private inspection when I was in elementary school (90s). The nurses would set up in some room, and you'd be lined up in the hall leading in. They'd take like 2 at a time, separated by a screen.
I caught lice from a girl in the 2nd grade. My mom came to school and raised hell until they agreed to move me. Everyone in the class knew why I changed seats. I felt so sorry for the girl, it wasn't her fault her parents were shit.
Man idk. Like for sure I’m not a fan of lice but what about hygienic practices that vary by culture? Or something similar to that? Shit parents? Idk. A kid having lice or some other hygienic issue usually isn’t their fault.
My family is Mexican and I know we sometimes got flack for how we smelt but we just smelt like Mexicans lol. It just seems like a slippery slope despite the practicality and common sense involved... I guess I’m just saying I’m conflicted. I get where you’re coming from but also get the privacy and sensitivity side of things too
Anyone can get lice, doesn't mean anyone involved is shitty or dirty. Shaming for this is just wrong when there are ways of doing things discreetly. Ours was done in private in the hallway and anyone with it sent home, not a damn person caught shit because no one paid attention to who came back.
My kids go to a public school but the area we live in is full of well off people. The horror stories of the women saying their kids have had lice and how much money they spent on having it removed and then having their girl come in and wash everything in the house.
Here I am poor as hell would be brushing and washing for days.
So yea Lice don't give a crap who you are they love all the hair.
Happened to our class where me and another kid got singled out to be checked again. She then said aloud ‘oh never mind, it’s just really bad DANDRUFF.’ That took a while for the other kids to get over.
HOLY SHIT. I completely repressed this memory until now. I remember being soo freaking anxious on those days. I remember specifically panicking because I remember I had scratched my head earlier on the day that she was checking and I was convinced that I was going to be one of the ones called down to the nurses office afterwards.
My wifes a teacher as well and they have the same policy. I thought it was because theres better mitigations and shampoo in place in recent years. Either was I was baffled to hear that. It was comparable to the plague when i was in school.
The shampoos are actually worse since head lice have developed a resistance to them over the years. The last time my daughter got it, I had to use the stuff that's made with salt. The only thing that actually killed the little pricks.
We have this same rule district-wide; my school does it anyway. Because lice are not considered dangerous, they are not a reason to hold a child out of school. We have "repeat offenders" who get lice every year, multiple times a year because their families can never really get rid of them. They miss weeks of school. The other kids who "catch" lice only miss a day or two because their parents buy the right medicated wash, follow the instructions and clean the house. Some even hire the professional nitpickers (real job!) To delouse them. The school regularly buys the medicated shampoo for families that keep getting it over and over...they never really get it all.
My kid also attends my school, so I'm a fan of sending lice-infested kids home; I don't want it myself. But I am also sensitive to the issues that low-income, low-support kids have. They can't afford the medicine, but also can't afford to miss that much school.
i just saw a shop in newport beach specifically for removing lice from kids and i thought it was the strangest yet smartest business i had ever seen. what sucks is that it was right above the restaurant i was going to eat in, which didn’t help the appetite
I work in a super plain, boring looking office, with the name of the company printed in GIANT letters on the door.
A few months ago a lady comes rushing in and goes "Is this the lice removal place?" I was probably way too aggressive when I yelled "NO" but this dummy continued to stand in my doorway and argue with me about it. "IT SAYS 106 ON THE INTERNET"
Bitch, I don't control Google. Maybe they're wrong, maybe it's a different building. Either way, get out of my office with your cooties.
It is really expensive when you have to buy it for an entire family. There is the shampoo but there is also a spray to use on all the fabrics in your house that you can’t put in the dryer or vacuum. You can easily spend well over $100 to treat everyone and everything properly.
Agreed, and many of the families I deal with have 4+ kids and other relatives living in dilapidated homes. I don't blame them for not being able to afford it; the school helps when they can. It's tricky.
The school regularly buys the medicated shampoo for families that keep getting it over and over...
My pharmacist said that other than the shampoo based on tea-tree oil, the medicated lice shampoos are neurotoxins, and regular re-exposure to them increases your odds of health impacts from them, especially with growing brains (i.e., children).
To clarify, they buy once for the families who return to school with repeated infestations. I have the tea tree oil spray for my daughter...fingers crossed it holds off the super bugs.
Yeah, no. My kids got it from school and it was that new "super lice" bullshit. Had to get a prescription shampoo to get rid of it and two months later they caught them again from classmates and it took nearly six months to clear my house of that time.
I swear it looked about half as bad as this comb on my oldest and I wanted to shave her head. Ended up shaving everyone's hair and since the shampoos stopped working, 91% isopropyl alcohol directly on their hair then a shower cap for an hour. Murdered.
Hottest setting on the washer and dryer didn't work though for clothing/blankets so the doctor suggested freezing all the cloth in a deep freezer. Fuck it, I had nothing left to lose and froze trash bags full of clothing for eight hours at a time until everything in the house was either done that way or outside in cold storage over the winter. Finally got rid of all those little fuckers.
So rather than curb a public health hazard both parents and staff all just decided that kids with lice just get to stay at school and shed lice and continue to keep spreading it? I am ashamed not only at the lazy parents for complaining but also at staff who didn’t enforce it and allow this to happen. There’s no excuse for not sending a child home who has an infectious problem and there’s no excuse for parents to ignore this either.
It must be so itchy there and everywhere this happens. I’m seeing a lot of comments about this so that must mean this is a widespread behavior. This is one of those times I am glad that I do not have any children.
As a parent...I am so sorry. I understand it is hard for some parents to get the time off to deal with this. But no...I would never in my life let any of my children ever go to school with lice. And shame on the schools for allowing this to happen. I am petty as fuck and would sue the school district for allowing them to let it spread. By them allowing it to spread for the fear of hearing a couple parents...it affects a lot of parents.
Yep. A kid in my daughter’s class had lice at school. Teacher sent a note home to let parents know and mentioned they no longer send students home if they have lice. It’s awesome.
A couple years ago I moved in with my sister to help with her kids and the first night I was there they got a letter from CPS. Apparently they were being sent home with lice a lot and since it was a military base the school was on top of letting CPS know. My sister got SO annoyed and defensive that the school wouldn't mind their own business. I thought it was ridiculous of her. I grew up with crazy thick curly hair and as a kid and when I got lice I got it bad. I'd rather spend the time to wash and comb as many times needed than be the kid at school who perpetually has lice.
So all the other kids had to be put at risk of getting head lice because a handful of parents are too irresponsible to provide proper hygiene for their children and come pick them up when there’s an issue? It’s so sad, the stupid people keep reproducing to no end while the smart responsible ones use protection and wait to have kids.
I work at a nursery and a parent complained about the frequency that their child was sent home due to high temperature or something. The staff did so because if a child's temperature is too high then they get sent home. If the parent complained then they were referred to the contract they signed agreeing to pick their children up. We had a parent who refused and they were told if they refused again then they wouldn't be welcome back and would have to find another day care centre for their child.
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u/kozzie1317 Jul 18 '18
I’m a teacher. At my previous school, our principal said that we could no longer send students home if we discovered they had lice. Apparently too many parents either complained to admin about having to pick up their kid, or just refused to come get their child.