Children who interact closely with others at school or daycare are highly susceptible to head lice. While not severe, they can be itchy and unpleasant. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to protect your child from head lice and manage them effectively if they do appear.

Who is at risk for getting head lice?

Every human with head hair can get head lice. That includes people of any gender, race, hair type, or socioeconomic status. Contrary to the threadbare idea about lice affecting people with poor hygiene, clean people get it most often.

Lice cannot be prevented by practices that are commonly regarded as good personal hygiene, such as hand washing and hair shampooing. Maintaining tidy surroundings and home goods is also ineffective. You can't get head lice or from getting dirty outside. Lice are almost exclusively caught from direct contact with humans.

And which people interact physically with each other the most daily? Indeed, certain vocations could require more physical contact and touching. Nurses, athletes, hair stylists, and dancers, to name a few. However, no occupation compares to the continual physical contact that caretakers and children experience.

7 tips to prevent head lice

So, how can you prevent lice? Since the prominent people who spread lice are children at play, prevention should start with educating children about how to avoid getting lice. Be proactive. Make preventing lice a personal hygiene habit. Keep your hair off other people, wash your hands after using the restroom, and cover your mouth when you cough.

Explain Head Lice to Your Kids

You might be surprised to hear that children frequently feel too embarrassed or terrified to notify their parents they believe they have lice. Stigma leads to secrecy and delays treatment until a lice outbreak gets out of control. When discussing head lice with your children, emphasise prevention techniques and the fact that lice are common and not anything to be embarrassed by.

Avoid Sharing Head-Touching Items

Head lice only live in head hair. However, sometimes the bug will attach itself to personal objects that come into contact with hair. Teach your kids not to share anything private that has just touched the head of another kid.

Don't share combs and brushes, hair clips, or hair ribbons;
Avoid sharing clothing that touches heads, like shirts, coats, and hats;
Never use another child's headphones or helmet.;
Place children in car seats that have been used by a youngster with head lice no more than 36 hours ago.

Minimise Head-To-Head Contact

The good news is that head lice cannot jump or fly! They rarely leave their human host and cannot infest homes or belongings. The infected individual contracted head lice about 95% of the time by coming into contact with other children's heads. So, the best way to prevent lice is by reducing direct contact.

Children should be taught to stay away from making head contact with other children who are infected. We are aware that saying this is far easier said than done. Encourage games and sports activities that don't include close contact.

Separate Personal Belongings

Ask your child's school if they can wear their coat over the back of their chair instead of putting it in the coat closet in order to prevent the spread of lice.Remember, though, that personal items are usually not the cause of the spread of head lice.

Each child should have pillows, bed linens, and towels for head lice prevention at slumber parties. Machine washes in hot water at 130 F, or runs a high heat drying cycle afterward.

Choose Hairstyles that Prevent Lice

Teach children how to avoid having lice in their hairstyles. Short hairstyles are ideal for preventing lice because they reduce the likelihood of the hair touching the hair of another youngster. If your child enjoys having long hair, use combs, clips, or hair ties to keep it back throughout the school day. Wear hats while playing outdoors.

Use natural lice-repellent treatments to style the hair. Any hair product — gel, hairspray, oil, lice repellent spray — reduces your odds.

Clean the Items That Have Been in Contact with the Head of a Person with Lice

Head lice don't stay on a human host for more than 36 hours. The child's hair contains lice eggs that are firmly attached and perish if the hair sheds. Only objects that come into direct contact with your child's hair both before and after lice treatment need to be cleaned.

There's no need to get rid of anything. Brushes and combs can be refrigerated for an entire night or immersed in hot water for ten minutes. Although placing stuffed animals in a plastic bag won't suffocate them, it may prevent your youngster from petting them for a few days. Even these safety measures might be more successful with LiceDoctors' approach.

Regularly Check Your Child for Nits and Lice

It is advisable to presume that your child gets exposed to head lice at school regularly. During the school year, examine each child's scalp and hair every two weeks using a magnifying glass and a bright light. Use a fine tooth comb on your child's entire head if a friend has head lice.

If anyone in the household has visible nits or live lice, check your whole family immediately. Recheck them every few days for a couple of weeks after everyone seems clear. Never wait for symptoms to develop since symptoms don't typically start for weeks after a child catches head lice.

Reducing the expansion of head lice

It's likely that until your child starts to have an itchy scalp—which usually happens after weeks of head lice—you won't know they have head lice. Using over-the-counter insecticides is not the best strategy to avoid lice. It is the overuse of these pesticides that leads to the spread of "super lice." Increasing amounts of studies show that over-the-counter insecticides are rarely effective in treating infestations.

Want to know how to prevent the best lice treatment naturally with products? Keeping the hair up in a bun is probably your best option. If a child had recent head-to-head contact with an infected person, they could sleep on an old towel with olive oil, saturating the hair overnight.

Discovered head lice in child's hair?

Don't panic; it's just bug bites! Like mosquitoes, head lice are parasites that bite to feed on human blood. Unlike mosquitoes, medically reviewed research demonstrates that head lice rarely cause severe harm and don't spread other infectious diseases.

The prominent harm done by head lice is psychological. Completely eradicating the problem can be frustrating. Well-meaning but stressed-out parents can inadvertently set their kids up for a lifelong phobia when minor errors cause recurrent cases and social stigma. If you don't feel confident handling an outbreak, call Nitwits Team to book an appointment for today's best in-home natural lice removal!

Protecting Your Child from Head Lice: 7 Tips for Parents