Head Lice

Kirstenmumof3 wrote: Well I'm furious with Claudia's Daycare right now. This is about the 10th time that she hasn't gotten head lice. I was called this afternoon to have her picked up early from Daycare. As soon as she got home I gave her a bath, did the lice shampoo (using the lice comb to comb the shampoo through her hair) and I washed all of her bedding, snowsuits and hats. I've had it! I talked to my friend (who ran a daycare) and explained to her what they told my FIL, that she had little white specks that looked like dandruf. My friend told me that wasn't lice. I have combed her hair again and I can't see anything. Not that I would even know what they look like. UGH! I absolutely hate this Daycare (for other reasons than this).

OH and I forgot to mention that she can't go back to Daycare until Wednesday (Trust me I would be more upset about that, if I wasn't home for a week and had little time to spend with her)! She can go to school, DH has talked to the principal before about this and they've said that as long as we've done the treatment they can go to school. So my FIL is picking both Emily and Claudia up from school tomorrow.

zdk753 replied: I feel for you. All of my kids got head lice from daycare not to long ago. What do the white spots look like? Can you just brush them off or do you have to pull them off? If you can just brush them away it's not head lice.

kimberley replied: ugh what a PITA! hope it clears up quickly. so u going to change daycares?

Kirstenmumof3 replied:
There wasn't anything on her hair. And during the winter she does get dandruf really bad.

Kirstenmumof3 replied:
Wish I could, but we are subsidized and they only allow so many subsidized spots at each daycare. So we would have to wait a long time to get into another one.

amymom replied: Kirsten, I am sorry they are putting you through this. I would suspect that they are wrong, just like you do. Next time it happens, I am sure you can have them show you what they think is lice. I have no personal experience with it, but used to work in a pediatrician's office and I heard the nurses say that if you part the hair and wait, you can see them move. The lice are usually small and black and the nits or eggs are white and fuzzy looking. I always imagined that they looked like the end of a Q-tip only smaller. I guess you could research it on the internet.

I think 10 times is excessive. They need better detection, maybe the daycare needs an inservice. Know any good peds nurses that could look at her head and then call the daycare?

Hillbilly Housewife replied: I've had lice before, when I was young. If you can brush off the white specks...it's NOT LICE.

Lice you can see, and they pretty much come out during the shampoo, no problem, it's the eggs you have to worry about, because they don't get killed during the treatment. You have to go through her hair, bit by bit, with a very very fine toothed comb (they sell lice combs nearly everywhere they sell hair stuff) and you have to physically pick out the eggs, and squish them.

Zach has had a letter sent home about lice twice now... but he hasn't caught them.

Not fun.

I suggest maybe printing off some fact sheets for Claudia's daycare... and let them know that this is the 10th time she's been sent home for dandruff, and you'd appreciate them getting to know what lice is before calling you to get her for it.

THey don't sound like a very good daycare, if they can't even tell what lice is.

gr33n3y3z replied: that is so sad
why do ppl. do and say things if they have no clue what they are talking about or seeing

amynicole21 replied: That happened to me once as an adult! I was at the hairdresser and the guy said I had lice - I was mortified. I've never had lice in my life, and certainly did not have it then. You'd think a hairdresser would know Poor Claudia.

lisar replied: I know how you feel. I dealt with it about 3 weeks ago. I hate them. I had to do the whole cleaning heads thing and the beds, the pillows, the car, the couch everything. I hate it. Glad it was only dandruff. You would think they knew.

Edited due to spelling.

Boo&BugsMom replied: What kind of policy do they have? Do they have a NO NIT policy? I wouldn't take my child anywhere that didn't have a no nit policy. That's what I find strange...they told you she couldn't return until Wed. That's pretty vague. They should have told you she couldn't return until all nits and all lice are gone from her head instead of just saying she can't return til Wed. The way they handled it more or less tells me they don't have a great way of dealing with it. Also, nits can take up to 7-10 days to hatch, so even if she returns on Wed, left over eggs can still hatch after that. How they are handling it doesn't make much sense to me at all.

You'd think if she has had it that many times that they would know by now what it looks like!!!

Kirstenmumof3 replied: I had my mom check her out because both my brother and sister had lice as a child. She checked, Emily checked, I checked and we can't find anything!