When lice happens in the modern family

In the past, when someone called us and wanted us to treat one of their kids for lice, we usually said, 'we also recommend checking everyone in the household'. However, we recognize that in today's world, home may be defined as being 2 households or even 4 households. When you have an active case of lice on a kiddo that regularly goes between multiple households, if everyone in all households does not get checked, you leave a window of possibility that the unchecked members of the family may be in the 50% of the population that do not itch when they get lice. And then, in a week or so, you have active cases of lice again.

We, as your local lice queens, have started changing the questions we ask when scheduling, so that we can be more tuned in to what the family structure might be and determine if we are needing to offer counsel on the multi-house dynamic or not. We understand it can feel daunting to get everyone checked, especially if your kids go to grandma's after school and she also keeps the neighborhood kids, and dad has been out of town for 4 days, but his girlfriend's kids were over the last time your kiddo was there...SO if we don't ask correctly, and you don't think to tell us, lice comes right back to your living room. (Well, not the living room, since lice don't live on your stuff, but onto your heads in your living room!)

Then what do you do!?!?

BREATHE is always the first thing. And even when it is daunting, if you come at it calmly with a plan, your well-being intact, everything will go more smoothly. If you are in a state of high anxiety, it will be more stressful. We have been doing this a long time and we will walk you through our recommendations and offer counsel on how to handle different scenarios. There is no shame in having lice. If you have hair and you have blood, you can get lice. No one wants to have lice or for their kids to have lice and most of the time, everyone works for the greater good and gets checked. But if there is some confusion about the timeline of exactly how long little Johnny could have actually had lice, and people believe themselves to be in the clear, they might decide to skip the check. When really, they were all together in the thick of it.

We act in the role of lice detectives all for the greater good of your family. It is sort of like diving into the middle of an Agatha Christie novel as Monsieur Poirot or Ms. Marple. (apologies to all who don't know these characters but now you have your weekend Netflix assignment)

But what do you do if one of the households in your kiddo's world says no to getting checked because none of them itch? It is not as if you can sneak up behind them and perform wet hair comb-thrus with your handy dandy terminator...unless they are trapped under something heavy. You can share all of the information you learned from us and then, you can choose to simply let their house be in their hands. And as you read that and your lips formed the word "WAIT!!!!". Let me interrupt your panic to say, it does no good and can actually cause friction and discomfort for your kiddo and with the other household if you expend a lot of energy trying to convince them or argue with them to get headchecks. If there is any resistance at all or push back, take another of those deep belly breaths and plan to make the night your kiddo comes back from the other house headcheck night at YOUR house. Make it part of your routine; no big deal for your kiddo. It will just be what you do. Then if you know they went to the other house lice-free, but come home with an adult bug, then you can have that tricky conversation again and try to help the other parent understand how lice transfer works. And if they resist, for the sake of your blood pressure and your kid, let it go. If you check on the nights they return to you, you will catch it before it has time to grow into a righteous infestation. You can't control what others do, but you can create a routine at your house that takes care of the issue. And keep the desired peace.

Just to make everything even more challenging, kids today are also far more busy and in more activities then when I was a kid. I mean, we were dismissed from school, road the bus home and entertained ourselves by playing with the kids who lived on our street until our parents yelled at us to come in for dinner. No one did extra curricular much until middle school or high school. Maybe a few kids played T-ball on Saturdays. But nothing like the schedules of the kids of today. Clubs and activities year round on every day of the week and travel ball of some sort on the weekends. I get tired just listening to their schedules. Each of those teams or cheer squads is an opportunity to have received or shared lice. Our advice is, "be a friend, tell a friend". To be helpful, but also so you don't get lice back from someone who is not itchy and does not know their child has a growing community in their hair. Send those group texts, think about who attending the birthday sleepover and let them know. You would want to know and so do they, even if they freak out initially. Be strong and brave; we believe in you. Life in the modern world, friends. Let's navigate it together.