As a parent, you do everything you can to keep your child clean, so you might be shocked if you discover your child has caught a lice infestation. You should know that, even if you bathe your kid every day, lice can still make a home on their head. Head lice are tiny, parasitic critters that love the blood under your scalp, and they don’t care if you are poor, rich, clean, dirty or anything else. They are most common among kids since they can’t jump or fly, so they depend on crawling from an infested person to another, and kids are always coming into physical contact.
How Do I Know If My Child Has Head Lice?
One common symptom caused by head lice is that an allergic reaction to their bite can make your scalp feel itchy. If you notice small, red sores or bumps on your child’s head, these can be the result of your child scratching incessantly. Also, if your kid reports a tickling sensation on top of their head, this can be a result of the movement of the lice.
You may also see what look like little flakes of dandruff near the roots of their hair strands near the scalp. If you notice that they don’t fall off easily, however, these might be nits, which are lice eggs. The female louse lays them low down on hair strands near the scalp because the heat incubates them. They attach them with a natural glue-like substance that makes them hard to remove.
What to Do About Head Lice
Let’s say you suspect one of your children has head lice or that a school nurse has definitely told you they do. There are a number of possible approaches to trying to eliminate head lice. They fall into the general categories of:
- Buying an Over-the-Counter Lice Shampoo -These contain pesticides that are supposed to kill the live lice. They have a couple of problems. The first is that they only kill the live lice not the nits, so you have to repeat the treatment again in a week and then again in yet another week if you want to be able to kill any subsequently hatched lice that may have been nits during the first one or two treatments. The other problem is that the toxins in these products have been used for so many years that many lice are immune to them. Also, they are toxins, so your kid might have an unfavorable reaction to them.
- Using Prescription Lice Treatments – These are similar to the over-the-counter variety except that they have a reputation for being stronger. That being said, some lice will still be immune to these.
- Trying Home Remedies – This can involve the use of either olive oil, mayonnaise or Vaseline applied to your infested child’s head to attempt to suffocate the live lice. Since this only addresses the live lice, you need to repeat it at least a couple of times over the next few weeks to make sure you get the lice that were in the nit stage when you first applied the treatments.
head lice treatment - Going to a Professional Lice Treatment Service – Just as there are dentists to go to when you have a toothache or mechanics to go to when your car is having problems, there are businesses that specialize in head lice treatment.
Head Lice Removal in Dauphin and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
At Lice Lifters of Harrisburg, our team has the knowledge, tools and 100 percent safe and natural lice-killing products to handle this problem for your whole family quickly and easily; stop by our Harrisburg PA lice treatment center today. Lice may not be dangerous but they’re still no fun for any kid of yours afflicted with them. If you suspect your child has lice, we’ll start by verifying this and then handling the infestation in a single visit so they can get on with their lives free of itchy discomfort.
