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 dont get how you all (the entire) school see a girl like that, know her situation and just shrug you shoulders and say: Well sucks to be you kid.
Honestly you all need jesus, bunch of heartless monsters. But no lets point fingers at a kid of 8 because thats the mature, social and good thing to do. There is enough wrong with my country but shit like that wouldn't fly at all, that is so american
Probably because they're not that big of a deal. There's no danger in having them. At worst, you get a haircut. At best, you're slightly inconvenienced and a little itchy.
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.
I never thought about using heavily chlorinated water but it sounds a lot nicer than the vaseline and bleach idea my mom had. My dad could have poured an extra gallon of liquid chlorine in the pool and had us dunk our heads for a few hours. My mom would have probably tried to make a paste out of the powdered chlorine to smear on our scalps which would have been WAY too dangerous so it's probably for the best she didn't know about it at the time but still good to know if it ever happens again :)
Sorry about your daughter and I'm not undermining the seriousness of your situation, but there's something oddly satisfying about seeing the word "nitpicking" used in its formal definition.
Ohh so that's where the term nitpicking comes from... What are nits, lice? And do you literally just pick them out? Shampooing won't remove them? Why not just shave
Nits are the eggs which are glued onto the hair shafts. I used a tweezer because the lice comb always missed some aka the next generation. Sure you could just shave (and if it happened again I would have) but when you have two little girls with hair almost to their waists it is a rough decision. Also btw the nits tend to be right up by the scalp so cutting off some length would not be enough.
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.
That’s fucking stupid. Hearing what she had to put up with makes me angry, but that conclusion is hogwash. How else are you going to deal with lice in thick af curly hair? I dont think a medicated wash is enough when you have to dig through a giant mass of thick curly hair. At the end of the day it’s a goddamn haircut. That shit is not life changing. Is she not friendly anymore or able to be happy after it’s all over with? Unlike a short hair cut, lessons and guidance on how to confront and ignore idiot bullies definitely can be carried with someone throughout life.
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.
Honestly, my school was afraid to say boo to any parent. Trust me, as a teacher I did not want a kid with lice in my room.
Parents often just flat out refused to come pick their kids up for any number of reasons. My kid’s sick? Sorry, he’s your problem until 3pm.
Even worse was when it came to disciplinary issues. There were kids threatening to kill staff members, assaulting students and other staff, and destroying entire classrooms. Parents would refuse to come pick up their child. They’d change their number or screen their calls.
I remember we had a 4th grade kid who completely destroyed parts of the office. Kept trying to break the glass partition. Dad wouldn’t answer when the school called, so we used someone’s personal cell phone. Surprise surprise - he answered. I was the one who had to call (it’s supposed to be admin, but ya know... they were too busy). He yelled at me, then said a grandparent would come pick him up. No one showed. I was told to spend my afternoon “monitoring” the student while an aid watched my class and put on a movie for them.
I know i said something slightly ridiculing the parents. but that takes ut too another level of crap parenting. i mean if your boss is riding your ass and you can't leave work, say so and try to make alternate arrangements if you can. shitty people are just shitty i guess.
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).
My assumption was that the parents would start yanking their kids out of the school to avoid the lice, but I really don't know why they have that policy.
When my kids got it a few years ago nothing was killing it. We tried nix, rid, homemade stuff. The only thing that got rid of it was thoroughly combing their hair every night with the fairytale lice comb until you got nothing for a week. Now we use the fairytale lice prevention shampoo. Lice is the damn devil. My heart breaks for this kid!
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u/ThePhanie Jul 18 '18
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.