by Lisa Thaxter

Created on: June 09, 2008   Last Updated: June 11, 2008

It is every parents nightmare. The day your child comes home from school and declares "mum, my heads itchy!" What do you do? What do you look for? So let us start at the beginning.

Catching head lice is nothing to be embarrassed about. Thousands of children (not forgetting adults!) can catch head lice at some point in their life. Although they can be prevented. Clean or unwashed hair, short or long, head lice are not fussy about where they live. Lice cannot jump, swim or fly! They walk. Which, when you think about it makes it very hard to become infested. Two heads would have to be in very close contact, or touching, for lice to move from one head to another. With this in mind you can understand why so many children become infested whilst in school or the playground.

Checking for lice is not always easy. They are small, greyish brown insects, and at the largest stage of life they only reach the size of a sesame seed. The female louse lays cream-coloured eggs which stick firmly to the hair, looking very much like dandruff. Although often referred to as 'nits', nits are in fact empty egg shells from which the lice have hatched from. A human head can have on average ten head lice at any one time. Left unchecked that number can rise to 200! An itchy scalp can be a sign of lice. As can red patches on the scalp, which is caused by scratching. White dandruff like spots which are attached to the hair can also be a sign of eggshells.

Over the counter solutions at your local pharmacy are best to buy. They are not cheap, however if you have spotted any of the above signs then the hair solutions are best to use quickly, enabling you to treat the problem promptly. Treat all the family.

They say prevention is better than cure, how right they are, especially where lice are concerned. Regular wet combing hair is the best way of keeping them at bay. Pay special attention to the nape of the neck and behind the ears, lice love those warm areas.

A wonderful tip someone once gave me, and it works! is to spray either tea tree oil or normal leave in conditioner onto the hair (do this before your child goes to school every day). The lice can't latch onto the hair shaft, which in turn leaves your child 'nit' free!

Happy lice hunting!

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