Last week the kids finished summer day camp, and along with some memories and new friends, they picked up head lice. I’ve spent the last several days passing hours and hours preening and plucking and nit-picking. Tea tree oil and persistence got us through this round! Here in Montreal, if you do not treat with the toxic chemicals, you can’t send your children to school. Frightening to think of it, but I thought I would include a couple of the recommendations we were given, and post this with the hope that a few of you might have other ideas and suggestions to contribute.
Conditioner: The idea is to comb conditioner into dry or slightly damp hair, use lots of conditioner. Comb it in well so that the whole head is covered and the hair right down to the roots. Then you use a nit comb to get them all out. The conditioner helps to slow down the lice so that you are able to catch them all and it also helps to loosen the nits. Do this every day for a week and you should have got them all out.
Brush like crazy: This breaks the little pests legs so they can’t run away from you…. it also means they won’t survive because they won’t be able to feed.
Vinegar: Works in the same way as a toxic chemical or the tea tree oil. The vinegar stuns them and helps to kill the eggs. Always use a nit comb.
Tea Tree Oil: Has a strong acidic odour like vinegar and works in the same way to stun the lice and kill the eggs. Don’t use every day.
Remember: If you do have unexpected visitors like these you must wash all the families clothing and bedding, if you can’t use a hot water wash then add vinegar to the washing water it will help to kill any survivors. Don’t forget to vacuum the beds, and furniture too.
With a keen eye and persistence, I think we’ve managed to finally rid ourselves of these little devils. In the name of preventative measures, we’ll be adding a few drops of tea tree oil to all the shampoo bottles and doing a lot of creative hair braiding this year. When I was homeschooling this was something easily avoided. Now that the kids are in school, these are part of the joys of parenthood.
Hope these natural remedies for head lice come in handy!
If you would like more information and ideas on how to combat this problem there is a great site http://www.headlice.org which has information, suggestions and reasons why you shouldn’t use chemicals.
Here’s to squeaky clean scalps,
Tera