How to Check and Treat Your Children For Head Lice

Use a comb to check hair for lice.

You will need to check your child for lice if her teacher sent home a note saying a classmate has the condition, or you found out a sibling or friend has head lice. Or maybe the child is just scratching her head constantly. Having lice will not lead to any other disease, nor does it mean that the child is dirty. Unfortunately, it's a common occurrence in school-age children and one that can result in an infection through scratching.

Things You'll Need

• Comb
• Cat flea comb
• Head lice shampoo
• Head lice spray
• Clean towels
• Regular shampoo

Instructions

1. Use a comb or your fingers to separate the hair and see the scalp. Start separating the hair behind the ears and on the back of the head. You are looking for tiny brownish bugs (parasites) about the size of a pinhead; they will look black when they are full of blood. If it is just a minor or new case of lice, they may be very hard to spot, so keep looking a while before you give up.

2. Look for other evidence if you don't see any lice. Look for red patchy areas (feces), little tiny black dots where they have bitten the scalp and small white eggs (nits). The eggs can look like dandruff. The way you know it isn't dandruff is that it sticks to the hair. Pull it off of the hair carefully and place it on your fingernail. Squish it flat with your other fingernail. If it pops, it was an egg. If it just went flat, it was dandruff.

3. Use a cat flea comb to physically remove all the lice and eggs you can find.

4. Purchase lice treatment shampoo as well as a lice spray at a drug store. Spray the car, couches or anywhere the kids have been.

5. Wash your child's hair with regular shampoo but no conditioner. Dry the hair with a towel and then apply the lice shampoo. Rub it in as well as you can. Follow the manufacturer's instructions. Make sure every hair is saturated in it. You may have to leave it in the hair for about 15 minutes.

6. Rinse out the shampoo extremely well and dry the hair with a new towel. At this point the lice and eggs should be dead, but most of them are still on the scalp and in the hair. If your shampoo came with a comb, use it to comb out the hair using long, full stokes. You want to make sure the hair goes all the way to the back of the comb to catch the eggs and lice.

7. Repeat entire process in seven days to make sure there is no re-infestation.

8. Make sure to wash all the child's bedding, coats and clothes in hot water -- at least 120 degrees. Dry it on hot for at least 30 minutes to kill the lice.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't worry about lice that fall off of a person and onto floors or cracks. Lice can't live for more than 24 to 36 hours without a human host. Just vacuum up such material and dispose of it.

• Lice don't jump, fly or hop. They are spread by direct person-to-person contact. So to avoid head lice in the future, tell your child not to share brushes, combs, hats, coats, bedding or hair clips.

• Don't get the lice shampoo in your eyes; if you do, flush them with lots of water.

• Use gloves or wash your hand directly after applying the lice shampoo.

• Getting rid of lice is challenging if you don't follow the directions. You don't want to have to repeat the shampooing more than you need to.

References

• University of Minnesota Extension; Head Lice; Jeffrey Hahn