So we all know that nobody likes to talk about lice, yes I said it….LICE, LICE, LICE!! So now that I have your attention, and your head itching, let’s get down to business.
I have to admit that from a parent’s point of view, lice really is serious business, a gross nasty old business. It is enough to invoke fear in even the strongest parent, that one little word can bring a grown woman to tears, and take up her entire weekend or week for that matter. It can cause you to scrub your house from top to bottom like a complete germophobe, rip apart every bed in the house, and shove every stuffed animal your kids own into a big black trash bag and shove them in the back of your SUV for weeks, ummm ya, we’ll get to that story later! There is nothing worse than opening up a backpack in the evening, and pulling out “the note”, oh you all know what note I mean! Are you still scratching your head?
I use to fear telling people that my kids had head lice, I worried they would judge me and my house, thinking I was a terrible housekeeper and my home and children were dirty. Well those days are long over! Age and experience helped me to realize that those stereotypes are not true at all, and I am confident enough in the cleanliness of my home and children, well most days, to realize that it’s nothing I am doing. In fact head lice are attracted to clean hair, hmmm so should I be proud my kids are clean, or tell them to quit washing...the struggle is real.
Having 4 kids, ranging in age from 21 down to 6, I have dealt with head lice about 8 times in my parental career. A few times were repeat performances, as the products out there just don’t seem to do the trick, or they were getting reinfected at school by other children. There is nothing worse than spending days and days washing all the linen, cleaning your house, shampooing hair, and picking nits, only to have it return a week or two later. I have followed the directions as though it were the law, or my life depended on it. Come on now, no one in their right mind wants to do it again, over and over and over….
The last time head lice visited our home was about 6 months ago, this time I didn’t get a warning note from school, so I had no reason to be inspecting heads like a drill sergeant. We were sitting at the dinner table and my 6 year old was scratching her head, I suddenly recalled seeing her do it the day before as well. So when dinner was over, I asked her to come with me so I could take a look at her head, and low and behold, SURPRISE!!
Yep, once again some lovely unwelcome visitors, and of course in the girl with the longest hair. This time it took me 3 weeks to get rid of it, I was washing bedding every other day, inspecting, combing, shampooing and picking, and none of the products were working. I was told by the school nurse that there are now “super lice” that are resistant to the shampoos, oh great, because the regular lice weren’t hard enough to get rid of! I had nightmares involving little black bugs in superhero capes and body armor, it was enough to make any mama wake up with the cold sweats, itching and scratching her head raw.
Here I was drenching that poor kid’s head in pesticides and chemicals, and none of it was even working. I decided there was no way I was putting that stuff on her head again, so I had to literally pick every nit out of her long hair to finally get rid of them. Every day we went outside after school, and I used a metal toothed comb and spent hours picking through every inch of that girl’s hair. I don’t know how many hours in total I spend on it, but I can tell you this, it was a full time job.
I am now the most prepared mama on the block, I am as prepared as a boy scout! I keep lice treatment in my cupboard, as head lice never seem to rear their itchy little heads at a convenient time. I haven’t had to deal with them again since the last bout, knock on wood, but I have heard about a new product called Lycelle. You can buy Lycelle over-the-counter at Walgreens, and it’s pesticide free. Lycelle eliminates lice in a 10-minute application, one and done! Lycelle also eliminates super lice, lice, and eggs. It's 4 simple steps and you're done. So never get caught off guard, come on you got to be like a stealth ninja to defeat those super lice, keep a bottle or two in the cupboard just in case!
As for the stuffed animals, none were harmed in this story! I just got so sick of the dryer going non-stop, and was petrified of the power bill, that much to my children’s dismay, I bagged them all up in black trash bags and stuck them in the bag of my big old Excursion. I figured it gets as “hot as hades” back there and nothing could survive, not even super lice. So we drove around with the back of the SUV full of black bagged stuffies for about 3 weeks, one can’t be too safe you know!
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***Note - I received complimentary products for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
