Children and Head Lice

Head lice are a major nuisance through out the world, they move from head to head infesting the human hair with colonies of their off spring.

When head lice have found a host with the right conditions in their hair they breed wildly. The female head louse can lay between 3 and 6 eggs a day, which are the size of a grain of sand and the eggs only take a week to incubate before the baby lice, called nymphs are hatched. After hatching the nymphs go through 3 stages before becoming an adult, during each stage they shed their exoskeleton to promote growth.

The major cause for the spread of head lice infestation is children, now it's not a child's fault that they carry head lice from person to person, it is just that the children of the world support the head lice population because of their day to day activities.

Children tend to spend a lot of time in close proximity with each other as they play, they tend not to think about personal space, and if their head were to start itching they would not think that a little insect could be crawling through their hair.

Children between four and eleven in age are the most likely to carry infestation, this is because those older than eleven start to think about personal space and those under four tend to spend less time in close proximity to large groups of children.

You can check your child for infestation quite easily; you can purchase a louse comb from your local pharmacy and comb your child's hair with the comb once in a while. Although your child might not be happy with mum or dad running a fine comb through their hair it is a lot better than having an infestation left to flourish.

If an infestation is found then the local pharmacy will have many different types of head lice lotions, shampoos and creams. All these treatments have the main ingredient, insecticide; the treatments that take less time to work have the stronger insecticide ingredients in it.

Even after treatment it is important to check your child's hair with the comb to make sure that all the infestation has cleared and any dead lice are removed.

One difficulty with children and head lice is that even after you have managed to combat one infestation, you may find that within months or even weeks they have another infestation due to other children who may have head lice.

This cycle can carry on for months depending on how proactive other parents are in combating the problem. The only issue with this is that some parents do not believe in the treatments available so their children may have an infestation for long periods. The problem is, how do you tell a child they cannot play with one particular child without explaining why, we all know children can be very upfront and it my cause friction or embarrassment to the child with head lice.