Friday morning I received an email from my kid’s school, stating that someone in one of my kids classes has lice. I tried calling the school to find out which one of my kids classes had it, but due to confidentially they weren’t going to disclose. Which I understand, but it still frustrates me.. I wasn’t asking for the child’s name, just the class. I don’t know about other parents, but for me the word lice triggers fear. Fortunately I’ve never personally had it, but I knew of people who did when I was younger. Most people believe that only dirty people get lice, actually it’s quite the opposite. Lice likes clean hair and once you’ve got it, it can be a pain in the butt to get rid of. Despite my inner panic, I didn’t make a big deal of it. I’m always stressing to the kids the importance of not sharing their hats, and other things with other people…but I guess kids will be kids.
This morning one of my kids started complaining about how itchy they were. As I said I’ve never had to deal with this, so I did a google search to see exactly what lice is supposed to look like so I knew what to look for. Let me mention it’s not something you want to be searching at all, unless you absolutely have to. My skin itches just thinking about it. As crazy as it sounds I take preventative measures to avoid this the kids, and I have separate hair brushes. Once I had a vague idea of what I was looking for, I started going through each childs hair. It’s hard, but it’s part of this parenting gig. Sure enough, I found some lice on one of them.
Panic mode entered my body, and I started by getting everyone to change into new clothes. I put the house on “lock down”, and started washing everything in hot water. I told the kids they were no longer allowed on the beds, and to not touch each-other as much as possible. I got my mom to run to the store and pick up some lice shampoo, and once she got back we quickly washed the kid’s hair and did another clothing change. It’s only natural that once you mention lice, people usually end up starting to scratch their scalp. I got my mom to give my hair a comb through, she said there was nothing there despite the fact I was ITCHY it’s usually in your head people lol (get it?). I’ve been a parent for a little more than seven years, and I’m so happy I didn’t have to deal with this before. It’s exhausting having to washing literally everything, vacuuming, and wiping everything down in a couple of hours. Luckily we only have carpet in two bedrooms, so the vacuuming isn’t all that bad. There’s always a silver-lining, and I guess with this the upside is we ended up cleaning the whole apartment. 🙂
Have you, or one of your kid(s) ever had lice? How did you deal with it?