Lice are an elementary school problem....

Teenagers don't get lice. People with short hair don't get lice. We really need one of those red 'NO' buzzers in the clinic. But truthfully, one of us would probably get tennis elbow from hitting it all day long as we dispel the misconceptions stated above. Teenagers indeed can and DO get lice. People with short hair can also get lice. In fact, they can be the ones who bring lice into the household. In this day and age, we have to let go of that old idea that the pre-K to 5th grade crowd are solely responsible for infesting an unsuspecting family with lice.

How do these older humans get it though? Very few high school chemistry teachers have their classes sitting on the carpet in the front of the classroom for circle time. Or working on a puzzle on the floor. Or playing dress up in the pretend play area. The fact is that teenagers (and college students) get lice the same ways that little people do. These older kids get lice by head to head or hair to hair contact. Or by sharing hair ties and hair brushes at sports practice. By putting heads together with their besties at the lunch table while listening to the woes and dramas of their latest romance. We cannot forget that these older humans are also sometimes siblings of the younger crowd, so reading books at night with little Johnny or sister Sue, playing hairdresser and using your own hairbrush for your cousins from Oregon, and the list goes on and on....

And I am going to say it, even though I recently read someone else's blog that refuted it, cell phones being used as entertainment devices could be increasing the spread of lice in teens and college students. We watch it happen all the time in our clinic. The under 25 year olds sitting head to head on the sofa playing a game on their phones, but leaned against each other with hair touching. Watching videos on one phone while everyone's hair is down. You do that for 10-15 minutes straight and you have opened up a super highway of connectivity and transfer for lice. (We do try to keep all this from happening until everyone is lice free in the clinic!)

My daughter's bestie is in a sorority at college. And every single day, she posts pictures on her insta account of her and her sisters performing acts of service in the community or at sorority functions, and they pause to do what---? take some selfies to mark the occasion. Several winters ago, we had 4 college freshmen from 4 different schools come in for lice treatments 7-10 days after holiday break started. They had all been to parties right before they came home. All of them had been taking selfies with friends and roommates. And if you have any 15-20 year olds in your life, you know they don't just take one selfie and walk away; they do a series. No one moves, but they change their facial expressions or angles of their touching heads and take 4 or 5 photos in a row. When your heads are touching, it doesn't matter how long or short your hair is, lice can transfer. And while any of those 4 college students could have gotten lice in a one on one scenario with a sibling, working in a day care, or at a sleepover with a friend, it makes no sense to discount a possible method of transfer that continues to present itself.

Coming back to the subject of short hair, it may take a little more effort to have head to head or hair to hair contact sometimes, but lice only need a very short length of hair on which to lay their eggs. In our days of summer camps lice services, we used to see all these young campers who would come to camp with fresh buzz cuts, telling us screeners that they can't have lice because their hair is short! Those are the times I have wished for a helmet cam, where I can film that first swipe thru their hair and I find the full life cycle of bug development all just having a big time in that buzz cut.....happy and thriving! So in case you were thinking that giving your child a buzz cut will get rid of their lice, just stop now, dear. Let them keep the mullet but perform those weekly headchecks.