Every parent’s worst nightmare… your child scratches their head, and you think nothing of it. A few seconds later, they scratch again, and it gives you pause. The third time they scratch, it gives you chills.
Lice are THE WORST. I wish I didn’t know from first hand experience. A few months ago, I discovered my daughter got lice from school. My beautiful, precious 5-year-old baby had living insects breeding, laying eggs and living off her scalp. Horrified doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. When I discovered them, I called my mom, and bawled over the phone because it happened to occur at a rather challenging point in my life, and I will never forget what she said: “it doesn’t get worse than lice”.
She was absolutely right. Lice was my rock bottom. It is a place I never, never, want to be again. But I digress…
I read approximately 200 articles on how to get rid of lice. I didn’t want to expose my daughter to toxins or poisons, but, I needed the lice gone, without a question. They had to go, and quick. I took several different approaches, covered my bases, and within 2 days, the living lice were gone, and after a week, there were no more signs of nits.
Effective Treatments for Lice
First, and foremost, I feel it’s important that if you discovered lice, please rest assured it has nothing to do with cleanliness. My family is clean, we have good hygiene habits, but those tiny, creepy critters are quick and spread easily, especially among children. I was surprised to learn how many other moms I knew that have had to deal with lice.
Here is what I did to get rid of lice:
- Wash EVERYTHING – So, so, so much laundry is necessary when lice show up. I washed my daughter’s sheets every night for a week. I washed all of the throw blankets she used. I washed the towels she used every day. Her clothes, jackets, hats, and any other article of fabric that she used, and could be washed, were washed. I even washed the rugs in the bathroom. I used my regular laundry detergent, but turned my washing machine onto hot, for every load of laundry.
- Buy a Bottle (or two) of wine – you’re gonna need it.
- Stuffed Animals Gotta Go – All of her stuffed animals, hair ties, and brushes were put into plastic trash bags, sealed, and thrown into the garage. Nits hatch in 7-10 days, and lice cannot live without a host for more than 24 hours, so two-weeks should be sufficient to ensure no lice eggs survive, but I kept them out there for a month. #overkill
- Coal Tar Shampoo – Coal Tar shampoo is recognized as an effective treatment for lice, so I used it as soon as we discovered the lice. We used Neutrogena T/Gel Therapeutic Shampoo, and I can tell you that it works! After the first application, I could see dead lice falling out of her hair (total ick factor). Warning: EWG says this stuff is pretty toxic. I normally wouldn’t use anything with such a bad EWG rating, but… lice. And it was only needed temporarily. I used coal tar shampoo the first day we discovered the lice, and every 3 days for a 2 week period.
- Tea Tree Treatment – The day after the discovery, I mixed 1/4 cup conditioner with 15 drops tea tree essential oil and slathered it onto her scalp and hair. I put her hair up in a shower cap, and let it sit for 3 hours, then rinsed it out. I did the tea tree treatment once.
- Nit Picking – Is a term I will never use again. Nit picking, the bane of my existence for that week. It sucks, but is pretty necessary if you don’t want eggs hatching and having to start over again from square 1. Make sure you get a metal comb, not a plastic one. And if you don’t know how to nit pick, here is a youtube video that will do a better job explaining it than I can. I nit picked every night for a week, which is when I no longer found any eggs.
- Preventative Treatment – The lice are gone (knock on sooo much wood), but along with praying to the higher powers that I never, ever, go through the process again, I am using a natural, preventatitve shampoo on my little darling once a week, until she gets out of grade school. It’s a bit pricey, but one bottle should last several months, when used only once / week.
And that’s how we got rid of lice.
I never got them, even though she had slept in my bed a few nights before we discovered the infestation. How did I get a pass? I think it’s because I blow dry and straighten my hair. I was also grateful, for the first time, that my baby boy was still pretty much bald. No hair = no lice.
Have you ever dealt with lice? Do you have any tips on how to eradicate them? Share your advice or leave questions in the comments below!
I wish I had of seen this article before. I wasted so much money on lice shampoo that did not work, The only one that helped was Rid and it came with a metal comb, the cheap plastic ones just broke apart so completely worthless. Found out my dog had fleas and I had some in my hair too. T gel and salt (just regular table salt) to kill eggs and Advantage 2 for pets (you can buy individual ones from vet as it is quite pricey to buy the full box) Who knew humans could get fleas?? I just bought some T gel to make sure it is all gone..I will save my money next time (hopefully there isn’t a next time) but hopefully this will help someone else too. Also with all the laundry and vacuuming I’ve been doing my house has never been more clean so at least there’s that!!
I evaded my daughter having lice for 9.5 years. Then she began scratching. Because she’s homeschooled, initially I thought it may be an allergic reaction (not sure to what as nothing in our hygiene / cleaning supplies has changed in years. Though I should’ve thought about the fact that she’s regularly around public school kids.
At first I had her shower and then applied coconut oil (to soothe the itching) before bed. The next morning she washed her hair again. A few days later more itching. This time there was a “rash” around her neck back and shoulders (if it had only been the neck it might’ve prompted more action from me, but going down as far as the bottom of her shoulder blades (her hair doesn’t reach her shoulders) I was again convinced maybe an allergic reaction. Another round of coconut oil after a shower before bed.
When she was itching again a few days later I put coconut oil on her dry hair. I had gloves on (as I do anytime I work with oils as I can’t tolerate my hands feeling greasy). After several minutes I saw it. A tiny bug on the glove. I continued massaging the oil in / through her hair and lice continued to show up on the glove. I let the oil set about 30 minutes then sent her to shower & bed (knowing that the whole process had to restart in the morning after she slept on an untreated bed, but I wasn’t about to begin at 9 pm).
I slathered her hair with olive oil, covered her head with a shower cap and parked her on the couch while I got busy on laundry…..all the laundry. Even “clean” things got washed as my daughter tends to rummage through her closet when deciding what to wear. Stuffed animals got bagged up and put in the shed. Beds got stripped (checking my own hair tuned up no bugs or nits but I stripped my bed anyway….I also slathered my hair with conditioner and covered with a shower cap…..just in case). Mattresses got vacuumed then sprayed generously with rubbing alcohol. All baseball caps (we both often wear them) went through the dishwasher along with all brushes & combs and hair ties (in a mesh bag) on sanitize cycle. The entire house was vacuumed except for the couch I intentionally had my daughter “quarantined” to (that came later after she went to bed). Beds were remade as bedding came out of the laundry.
Then, after 8 -9 hrs of sitting with oil on her head, I took my daughter to the bathroom and combed through her hair for 45 minutes (thank God for short, fairly thin hair) swishing the fine tooth comb in alcohol after each swipe. Dozens of nits came out. I had her shower & wash & dry her hair. Then I applied my “homemade” licefree / vamousse (the active ingredient for these products is “Sodium chloride” which my high school chemistry class taught me is table salt…..so I make my own combining salt and dawn dish soap which is roughly 3/4 salt, 1/4 soap….just enough liquid soap to make the salt spreadable and stay in her hair, it actually does reassemble mousse when it’s mixed) to dehyrade / kill off anything that had not been smothered with oil & removed since I didn’t want any live bugs / nits going to a nice clean bed if I could at all help it. Covered her head again with a clean shower cap and sit for better than an hour (vamousse says to leave it in for 15 minutes, licefree spray says to spray it on and let it air dry ). After another shower to wash out the soap & salt and a quick comb out “just because” (not like our school had a “nit-free” policy so as long as they’re dead I’m not super worried about removing every last one), she went to bed, I then vacuumed the couch and took a shower to wash out the conditioner from my hair.
I repeat the salt & soap a few days later just to be sure, but I’m 99.99% confident no living lice or nits remained at the end of the day.
Lice: They are Smart, organized like the best army and move Fast.
Apply all anti lice treatments OUTSIDE because they jump off of the VICTIM or skip to lower parts of the body to wait until the coast is clear before they REattach and RE attack.
OR use a bathroom , clean thoroughly afterwards, bug spray, then bleach or other strong cleaner
Blow drying will blow them ALL over the room!
Dry clean clothing
Or STEAM Iron everything to kill them in your clothing
Elevate your water heater temperature to super hot for hot washes ( warn the family of hot water)
Check the kids ears, eyebrows, or where ever there is hair.
Tar shampoo helps
Kokatah by by DAX, is Coconut Oil plus Tar oil pomade
Apply to scalp and hair cover with plastic cap. They should be dead quickly. 10 minutes.
Wash with Tar shampoo
BLOW dry
Flat Iron
Or wash and set hair , sit under a hooded dryer with Temperature as warm as can be tolerated.
Good Luck to you.
They cannot jump and do not crawl off scalp except by occasional accident. Please stop spreading these myths and do your research. #kidshaveitagain
God I hope someone sees this. I’ve been dealing with lice for a year now (yes, a year! No exaggeration) and I’m losing my mind. I’ve tried traditional lice shampoos, listerine, oils, combing constantly and they’re still here. I tried the coal tar shampoo today (the one that is listed in this article) and I’m still only combing out live ones and I didn’t see any dead ones when I rinsed. Is the one listed the correct strength? Also how long should it be left in? I left it in for 30 minutes. I’m truly at my wits end here and I’m feeling like my only option left is to just shave all of our heads.
Hi Sarah,
I used the same strength as the one in the article and it helped. So sorry you’re dealing with it for so long – that’s awful!
The key is combing in small sections every other day to make sure you are getting all the nits. How often do you comb?
Girl mayo! Tgel and mayo! Buy Boo! Lice from amazon works better than fairytales from reviews.
Hi Sarah,
I hope you have solved your lice problem! I know how stressful it can be! My kids got lice and it was my first time dealing with them……I wasn’t sure what to do! Thankfully we have a professional lice service nearby who treated my kids. The key was the combing……we purchased the Nit Free Terminator Lice comb that they used. We had it on hand so we would be prepared if we we encountered lice again. Unfortunately, we did need it again but we were ready with our comb this time! Hope this helps!!!
Vamousse Lice Treatment and the infamous nit picking. Vamousse is different from other treatments, it works similar to salt on a slug. It dehydrates lice AND nits and causes them to implode. No pesticides. Very drying to skin and hair but that can be fixed with conditioner. The instructions are very clear on how to use and nit pick accurately. If in doubt after first treatment, do a 2nd one 7 days after the first one in case of any missed nits. I’ve had one treatment work before and other times I had to do a second round to be sure. Kids seem to get it at least twice a year from school or sleepovers no matter how much I educate them on NO head to head contact or sharing things.
If my kids got lice somehow, I would do everything that you have listed here. Starting with laundry, you are right that everything needs to be washed a lot more often than normal as you don’t want to risk the lice coming back. That and I would also do the preventative care after they are gone.
I’ve tried all of the home remedies too: Denorex Tar Coal shampoo, Listerine, Cetaphil Cleanser, etc. But the only one I will ever use again is the cheapest, fastest, and completely non-toxic: 1 part table salt dissolved in 5 parts cheap shampoo (I use Suave Coconut). Saturate the hair with this mixture, let it sit under a towel or shower cap for 90 minutes, wash out, and boom: dead lice. The salt basically dries the little suckers out. I am 99.9% sure that this also kills the nits, so I never bother nitpicking or even combing, but just to be on the safe side I repeat the treatment once more in 7-10 days. Unfortunately, not everyone in our town takes care of this problem and my girls have long hair and they like to wear it down. I’ve even caught it myself from my local (and super upscale) hair salon. TWICE. I know that’s where I got it because I was the only one in the house who had it!
DON’T: waste a lot of time cleaning the house top to bottom and washing or bagging every single stuffed animal. Lice are evolved to move quickly up and down a circular hair shaft; they don’t move particularly well on anything else. They do not fly or jump. Additionally, they have little to no motivation to hang out anywhere but on hair since that’s where the food is. Adult lice cannot survive more than 48 hours without a blood meal, so even in the unlikely event they are on clothing in a laundry basket, they aren’t going anywhere and they will be dead before your next regularly scheduled laundry day. Nits cannot survive off of a warm human head. This is the reason the eggs are laid 1/4″ off of the scalp–the warmth incubates the egg. It would be almost impossible for an egg to fall off, given that they are glued to the hair shaft. Even if a hair with a live egg were to fall of the head, the odds of that egg maturing and hatching a nymph are miniscule. And newly hatched nymphs can only survive 3 hours without their first blood meal.
DO: spray all brushes, combs, and recently used hair accessories that can’t be laundered with rubbing alcohol (or soak in salt water) and let air-dry. Wash the bedding of infected individuals (and anything they sleep with) the same day you treat. Wash coats and other items that need to be worn daily–anything more than that is overkill.
Thank you for taking the time to share all of that information, Mandy! That is super helpful to know!!
And thank you for sharing your story online and providing a place for others to share theirs as well, Andrea! I did want to clarify my above comment, I didn’t mean wash coats daily. Once on the day of treatment (and on any additional days of treatment) is sufficient!
Thanks for sharing this I have used the nix and other over the counter stuff and nothing worked I caught it from my grandbaby she is is pre-k now she has brought it home twice this yr I didn’t get it the first time but unfortunately I got it this go around I’m at the Dr now getting something cause my hair is so long and thick over the counter stuff did nothing so back to the drawing board
Thank you for this info.. Unfortunately this happend to me … Over a month ago but i still think for some reason my hair has lice.. Its probably more a mind game but my itchiness does not go away… I will be using Tgel shampoo for a few days .. But when i feel like it i do put maynaise on my head every night.. My daughter is the one who got it first.. Slept in my bed and i got it.. Maynaise treated us but i still purchased RID and did that too.. But Maynaise killed them all the first time.. Dead lice came off just on my fingers . it was crazy… Nightmare.. I oil my kids hair every day just because i never want to go through it again… But my head still bothers me.. Maybe it was all the viniger treatments i did after the first treating with maynaise.. I feel like i just wont get back to normal ..
🙁
Can you use conditioner to sit on their hair instead of shampoo?
Yes – I have heard many moms say conditioner works – you just keep it on their heads for a couple hours and it is supposed to suffocate the living lice.
Oh, forgot to mention that the last time I had to deal with lice was a few years back and those were those “super lice” that only responded to a rx from the dr-thank goodness insurance covered it as it was $120 a bottle.
I also read an article that one of the biggest causes for lice this year are SELFIES!!! Girls taking SELFIES have touching hair, 9 times out of 10. I drilled it into my daughter, while nit picking, that she is NOT to be taking any selfies, sharing hair ties or hats, or generally ANYTHING that may transmit the bugs. She wants to go to school today as it’s the last day before spring break starts on Monday so these were her requirements. I’m also gonna be redoing her hair into 2 TIGHT braids for school in about an hour. I’m grateful this happened right before spring break so I can ensure they’re gone by the time she goes back to school.
**Remember to FORBID selfies!!**
As I type this, I am sitting with my hair SATURATED with T-gel and a plastic bag over it. I ironically found out my daughter had lice by using the T-gel to help her dandruff-I always have the extra strength stuff on hand as I have psoriatic arthritis and get some pretty gnarly psoriasis scaled on my scalp. I had made sure her scalp was covered with it like I do mine and let it sit for about 20 mins. When I rinsed her hair, I noticed there were these brown ovals coming out by the dozens–ick! When I looked at a few I immediately knew what they were…lice corpses. So I checked online to see if T-gel is another lice remedy and found several sites saying it is, including this one! I checked hubby&son who are clean, lucky them right? I ran the nit comb through the underneath of my hair and unfortunately had some bugs. So it was treatment for me as well. While nit combing daughter’s hair, I made dang sure I got every centimeter of her head, braiding as I went–I knew those baby elastics would come in handy some day, lolz! Needless to say, she has about 25 braids now-that child has some super thick hair that’s shoulder length. So when it came time to do my hair, I started thinking about here and decided to section mine off in small pieces to do the shampoo. Mine is shoulder length but not as thick. But it is permed so a lot more difficult to work with. After it was in about 10 ponytails I got it wet and got to work. Luckily I have a huge mirror I could put on the floor in the kitchen so I could ensure I covered everything without having to lean over the bathroom sink. Took about 20 mins to cover everything and put a plastic bag over it to keep it all together. I’m also laying on the floor-with a towel under my head of course-in front of the heater. So my hope is between the T-gel and heat I kill all the little ba×#^÷d’s! I need every bit of help killing them as I will have to nit pick my hair myself as my husband can’t tell the difference between nits and dandruff. Even if he did, I know his lack of patience would leave some nits behind and I can’t have that. So wish me luck! I’ll let you know how it all turns out!
Thanks for taking the time to tell us how you’re approaching it, and good luck! It sounds like you have this under control 🙂 And thanks for the tip on selfies!
I’m so sorry you had to go through this. We’ve also had our own run-in with lice and it was a stressful time since all of the females in this household have long hair. To this day I still add a few drops of tea tree oil to our shampoo to ward off the little monsters off and I blow dry my youngest daughter’s hair dry at least once a week. We didn’t try the coal tar shampoo but I’ll remember that tip in case we (hopefully not!) or anyone I know ever faces this problem again.
Oh no, sorry to hear you’ve had a run in with it, too! Isn’t it awful? I think adding a few drops of tea tree oil to your shampoo is a great idea! I will try that when we run out of our tea tree oil shampoo. Thanks for the tip!