Simply put, head lice can only be permanently banned from your family’s heads when you learn how to vigilantly check for their appearance, when you can recognize the symptoms before a full-on infestation is underway, and when you’re willing to do a bit of work to banish them once they’ve attached themselves to your world with their specialized little claws.

This takes a little time and attention, but will reward you with a sense of empowerment and will bring you a little closer, literally, to your family.

 The work part is up to you.  The bottom line is that no matter which of the “quick-fix” options you choose, there’s no getting around a thorough combing with a high-quality metal nit comb.  You can go straight to the combing, using non-toxic, pesticide free products that are widely available (full disclosure: we sell a lot of those types of products), which will require an upfront investment in time and a nit comb, but I promise will save you time and money and the inevitable frustration of other methods. 

 Or you can complicate things by trying drugstore preparations, which invariably require you to purchase a second application (imagine that!) and may pose health risks, or by filling a prescription, which also may pose health risks, and still requires combing in order to be fully effective.  You can also go for the pantry cure: mayonnaise, vinegar, olive oil, petroleum jelly—all bad choices for various reasons, the most significant being that you can’t reliably suffocate lice or kill nits with any of these products.  Be prepared to get on your knees and pray for help getting some of these things out of your child’s hair—some of this stuff is NOT water soluble.

Or you can call a professional service (here comes the pitch!) like Lice Happens (now that wasn’t so painful, was it?) who will come in and teach you how to take care of head lice, once they’ve removed every last visible critter from your family members’ heads.  Just be sure the professionals are there to make your life easier, know how to deal with the life cycle of head lice, and don’t want to make money doing laundry for you.

 Check the Harvard School of Public Health’s paper on the truth about head lice, or the gold-standard of research on head lice, the Frankowski et al article in the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal, both of which are free and accessible to anyone.

 Oops, did I say that out loud?

 I guess I did.  But only because I care about you.

 The truth is that summer camps are a perfect place for head lice to achieve their evolutionary purpose: making more head lice so the species can continue to thrive.  When I went to camp, which I did EVERY summer (possibly because my parents found this foolproof annual break from parenting me to be extremely worthwhile), the friendships I forged were closer in a lot of ways than the ones I had at home—and the keyword here is “closer.”  We lived in close contact at camp—a lot of lying around on each other’s bunk beds, head-to-head on the same pillow as we giggled, wrote letters home (yes, with paper and envelopes), played games, and engaged in the highly head-lice-relevant activity of mutual hair styling (which usually meant, “let’s see how many bows and clips and bands we can put on each other’s heads to make the most ridiculous-looking head we can!”).  You’re envisioning the nightmare, aren’t you?

 What can parents do to prevent the gift-that-keeps-on-giving?  Two things.  First, add a head lice screening to your camp departure checklist.  Screen your child before s/he boards the bus or gets in the car for the trip to camp.  If you aren’t confident in your ability to do it, find a nurse or a professional service (full disclosure: Lice Happens does camp screenings) that will screen your child.  Second, ask your camp director what they’re doing to make sure kids are screened upon arrival.  Some camps have screening procedures set up, with qualified camp nurses or professional services doing the screening, but many still have high hopes that it just won’t happen at their camps, so they wait until there’s a problem affecting more than one camper before taking action.  And sometimes that action includes sending children home for treatment. 

If your camp falls into the latter camp, gently suggest that they might reconsider that tactic and put an arrival screening procedure in place. (More disclosure: Lice Happens sells inexpensive screening kits for camp nurses).  It could save your child, and many others, from a summer camp memory they’d rather forget.  Summer camps who don’t screen are risking a lousy summer, and nobody wants to pony up for that.

The lesson from our last post is that a little research goes a long way to making sure you get subject matter experts, rather than technicians, when you invite a professional head lice removal service into your home or school. Here are a few questions you can use when interviewing head lice treatment services to quickly determine their level of expertise:

Ask if anyone on staff has medical training. Is there an RN or MD on staff?  Find out how the specialists who will treat your family have been trained, what their treatment protocols are, and how they keep up with the latest in treatments.

Ask about their screening process. If they don’t wet comb the hair for screening, call someone who does.

Ask them to describe their protocol and why they do things that way.  If they can’t give you a detailed description of thorough and repetitive combing process with proven results, find someone who can.

Ask them how they break the life cycle of lice to prevent recurrence. If they can’t tell you specifically how long it takes for a nit to hatch, mature, mate and lay its own eggs, call someone who has expertise with head lice.

Ask them about currently available head lice treatments. If they can’t describe at least four different categories of over-the-counter and prescription treatments, and give you the pros and cons of each, get in touch with someone familiar with all of the options.

Sadly, misinformation about head lice is still rampant in the 21st Century. When lice happens to your family, make sure they get the best possible advice from real professionals.

Not everything that happens in the major Metropolitan areas where Lice Happens™ works is funny. This is unfortunate, considering our predilection for light, good humor. Some of what we encounter out there is a little strange, if not downright disturbing. For example: we recently got a call from a distraught parent of a private school student in the Metropolitan Washington area. The school had discovered a case of head lice and called in a local removal service. The service arrived, screened the students and teachers, recommended that dozens of students and faculty be sent home, then proceeded to sprinkle baking soda like fairy dust throughout the school.

Great tactic for removing pet accident odor, but 100% useless in breaking the cycle of head lice.

The worst part is that the “service” served no one by getting the administration so upset about the outbreak that they closed the school and postponed the school play scheduled for that evening. The disruption was unnecessary as was the emotional toll. The aforementioned parent called Lice Happens to ask for a re-screening, as they were uncomfortable with the initial experience, and because the treatment for head lice offered by the school’s service came with a three-hour minimum, cash only.

(It’s exceptionally rare for us to see individual cases that take three hours to resolve.  The average time to clear a head is about an hour and a half.)

The vacuuming was a good idea, but generally speaking, most schools have that part of it under control, as they already use professional cleaning services. The disturbing part is that there are “professional” head lice removal services that employ people without any background or real expertise in head lice treatment, but are good at housecleaning and marketing, and collecting cash. Since head lice removal services need not be licensed, anyone can start head lice treatment services and charge high rates for what amounts to housecleaning, which is the least important part of breaking the cycle of head lice, according to a study reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Because lice that are no longer on a human head are basically doomed, they say, “Herculean cleaning measures are not beneficial.”* The most important part is removing all lice, nymphs, and nits from the head of the infested person(s), and doing it thoroughly.

*See the full article here: http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/110/3/638

At Lice Happens™, our image and our brand is differentiated by our highly professional manner, and I’m all for it. After all, I pick nits for a living, so I’m going to grab any straw that helps bolster my self-image, and hold on to it–tight. I know it’s true that clients make a quick judgment about us when they open the door—after all, what kind of person actually CHOOSES to be in this business, doing work that sends sane people into fits of face-scrunching and head-scratching? Some luckless soul who is otherwise unemployable? No wonder they are always visibly relieved to see an appropriately attired adult arriving at their home. Recently, a client threw open her door, took one look at me, and in a perfect Linda Richman “Cawfee Tawk” accent blurted out, “Oh! You’re perfect!” I took it as a compliment. It is nice to know that I’m the embodiment of nitpicking perfection. I realize that it’s equally likely she was just relieved that I didn’t show up in a pickup with “Lice Happens” emblazoned on the doors, or a giant head louse riding atop the cab, but I prefer to think the former is true.

Alas, there are days when perfection fails, and though my mind tells me, “You are professional and strong and compassionate (not to mention hot) like Michelle Pfeiffer in ‘I am Sam,’” my body says, “How about Steve Martin in ‘A Wild and Crazy Guy?’” Nothing like a reality check from The Voices That Live in My Head to keep a nitpicker humble.

Picture one such day, when I visited the exquisite home of a Philadelphia-area client. I, too, have certain expectations about what a treatment call will be like, and based on the zip code, have developed a reasonably good sense for what it might look like from my own perspective when the door opens.

I am sometimes very wrong.

Picture another Steve Martin movie, Parenthood—the associated chaos of multiple kids (six, in this case) with the wild energy of lab puppies who have in fact just returned from a raucous sledding outing, bantering adults (two sisters and a husband) in full-on head lice freak-out mode, and now, one professional nitpicker at the door gazing, stunned, into the madness, my expectation of a certain level of decorum shattered.

Unchecked Pandemonium

It might have been the unchecked pandemonium that led to the distraction that led to the enormous knot on my head that is the actual subject of this post, but I prefer to think that it was my singular focus on the job at hand. Supporting this contention, I followed the Lice Happens protocol that dictates creating an atmosphere of gentle calmness and light humor before beginning the tedious work of picking lice and nits from a fidgety child. (This isn’t an insult; try getting any child to sit still for an hour while a stranger combs her hair repeatedly.) The adults set the tone, and getting them to release their anxiety is an art which we can talk about in detail some other time, but it sometimes involves encouraging said adults to have a cocktail in another room.

After a while, my efforts to set the stage for a successful head lice removal treatment paid off, and the ornate dining room where I was to work now exuded the serenity of a yoga studio. A few minutes into the treatment, I turned, my head still bent over from nitpicking, to clear the comb of its ghastly bounty onto a paper towel laid out on the dining room table. As I straightened my back to stand upright, I felt the sledgehammer connect with the back of my head. Wham! I had whacked my head on the huge, heavy, yet somehow invisible metal chandelier that graced the dining room. The magnifying goggles I wear had turned from indispensible tool to evil prankster, blocking my view of the metallic behemoth. I felt the top of my head for what I was sure would be a gusher of blood, based on what I read in the stars that now flickered before my eyes. Nothing but a goose egg, and a bruise to the “professional” component of my job description. “Oh!” exclaimed the wife, “my husband does that all the time!” which should have been my first clue that more peril loomed ahead.

The peril that loomed ahead

Twenty minutes later, the comb again brought forth a treasure trove of lice, nymphs, and nits. Once again, I cleared the comb onto the paper towel and to my horror, stood up and slammed my head into the chandelier, this time hard enough to send it into a jaunty dance, like a 200-pound skeleton at a Halloween party. Certainly, there would be blood this time!

Happy me, just an ostrich egg adorning the goose egg. My eyes stung with tears and my magnifying goggles began to fog. But, being the professional that I am, I continued my work, confident that the righteousness of my nit removal mission would stand me in good stead at the Pearly Gates, should I drop dead any moment from internal swelling. So engrossed was I in the performance of our 100% quality guarantee, that twenty minutes later, I triumphantly cleared the last of the beastly abundance from the nit comb and stood up to declare victory.

The chandelier rocked as if an earthquake had hit, and I hit the deck. From my graceless position, prone on my client’s handsome tapestry rug, I asked, in a small voice, “Do you think we could move the table over a bit?”

Lice Happens was featured in the Sunday, September 13, 2009 edition of The Washington Post Magazine in the Making It section!

Read the article here:
Nit-picking friends start a welcome new business

Lice Happens was featured in the Thursday, February 19, 2009 edition of The Capital Gazette newspaper in the Family Living section!

Read the article here:
Annapolis women start professional lice removal service

See our video clip on The Capital Gazette’s web site here:

Lice Happens Video

Lice Happens Now Open in Annapolis

View the Press Release

Lice Happens was featured in the Wednesday, December 9, 2009 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer!

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Leaving ‘ick’ to the pros

Lice Happens Offers Free Community Education Programs

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Lice Happens Head Lice Removal Services Now Available in Delaware!

View the press release