SUNDAY TIMES NEWS REVIEW 7 October 2007

ITCHY SCRATCHY: the nits are back.....

Barely four weeks into the school year and already the sign is up: there's a case of head lice in Year One. Going on my experience of the last six years at the school gate, this sign will make its itchy way from one window to the next around the whole school for the entire year. Nits, it seems, are winning the battle of the itch hands down, and I personally have had enough of it.

According to my mother, who isn't always wrong, when I was a child I never had nits. As far I can recall neither did anyone else in my class at school - or, if they did, it was kept very quiet and the beastly crawlers were eradicated before they had time to mastermind their dastardly attack on the rest of us.

Until my kids started school I thought head lice were only found in the hair of unusually dirty, nasty children. Not just slightly unwashed, like mine, but properly filthy kids who also didn't eat vegetables, watched commercial television and wore ill-fitting shoes. Now, having had visits from the little critters regularly for six years and watched almost every member of the school fall prey to the itching bug, I have been forced to change my mind. Lice (those are the creatures; the nits are their eggs) don't care two hoots whose head they set up home in, and can be found choosing soft furnishings on the scalps of the loveliest, cleanest, most well-behaved, vitamin-filled, well-healed angels you could ever meet.

And once you've got them, the little bastards are nearly impossible to eliminate.

Weeks, even months of combing, conditioning, treating and picking can still leave eggs undetected, and just when you thought you were safe to go out in public again - calamity! The lady behind you in the bus queue spots one making a dash for glory along your daughter's parting and it's back home again for another rummage behind the ears. (This is a louse's equivalent of a day spa, incidentally, with the nape of the neck being nothing short of Nirvana.)

But why are lice so prevalent? How come most thirty-somethings I discuss the finer details of louse-genocide with, say lice were scarce when they were young? Why is the presence of nits not greeted with utter revulsion instead of a gleeful, 'Oh don't worry, Jasmine had them all year!'

And, most importantly, because here's where the root of the problem lies, why are we collectively so hopeless at getting rid of them?

First off: why are head lice so prevalent today? Well, now, I wonder. Could it possibly be because nobody can be bothered to check or treat them properly any more, and teachers are not allowed to tell parents that their child has nits? Possibly ?

Ask anyone over the age of forty if they know what a Nit Nurse is, and you're almost guaranteed to get one colourful story or another. Nora the Explorer was one. Nurse Nit Picker was another. I've even heard of a Naughty Nitty in Doncaster , but I didn't ask more about her. Nit nurses were a regular part of school life for generations of school children in this country, but have all but been wiped out. Interestingly, the opposite seems to be true of the head lice. Coincidence? Maybe, but it does seem to me like an eminently sensible idea to get a neutral third party to properly check every child's head thoroughly several times a term and report back to Mum or Dad if their darling Tommy-kins has several million eggs on his head.

But what's this madness, I hear you cry? Allow a professional to look at my child's head? Surely we cannot have that, because such invasive examination might upset a child's delicate nature. It might be humiliating, or embarrassing. It might even be considered an invasion of a child's privacy.

Oh please. Head lice upset my delicate nature far more, and as for 'personal space' - whatever happened to the personal space of the kids who don't want nits? Check the heads, send them home, tell the parents to sort it out and be done with it. Next!

Sending children home can, of course, be problematic. One outraged mother whose daughter was sent home for having nits was concerned that she was missing out on her education - for which her mother was paying. Hmmm, how about educating her about social responsibility and stop re-infecting the whole class?

Of course it's inconvenient to have your kids sent home if you work, nits are hardly life-threatening and nobody wants a child to feel singled out, or 'dirty'. But let's face it: distributing a note saying 'please can all parents check their child's head for lice' has been proved to be jaw-droppingly ineffective, because nobody can be bothered.

And so to the parents. I've asked enough of them in researching this piece to be wholly convinced that here we have the real culprits. Not the lice, who are merely going about doing weird lice-y things, but we parents. Honest parents admit they don't check their kids' heads as often as they should and can't be bothered to treat them properly. It's a classic case of 'I absolve all parental responsibility and want to bury my itchy head in the sand.'

This is ridiculous. If your child has nits, YOU have to deal with it - for as long as it takes. 'Condition, nit comb and pick' is the mantra of all responsible parents, and should be carried out every other day for at least a month to be sure of getting rid of them. I don't care if you want to watch Heroes or you need to check your eBay biddings. Sort out the nits - now!

If re-instating nit nurses and sending infested children home is what it takes to stop the laziness and get that nit comb out, I'm all for it. Right then, who's first...?

NIT BITS

How do you get rid of them?

Nit combs work best, ideally if hair is wet and covered in conditioner. You can also pick lice and nits out one by one, but this requires the patience of a saint from both of you.

Most Chemical head lice treatments are expensive and ineffective as they don't kill the eggs. All of them stink - always a bad sign - and there are question marks about exactly how safe it is to cover your child's head in carbaryl and other nasties. There have been reports of associated asthma, coughing fits, burning and blistering, and you must read the guidelines carefully.

Electronic nit combs are great fun, as you can hear the lice being zapped to death by the electric current. They cost more but last for years. Ours worked wonderfully, until my daughter dropped it in the bath...

Combing through with tea tree oil is thought by some to keep lice at bay, but I haven't found it works - it just smells.

Suggestions from other parents. To dry out and kill eggs: 2 parts 40%alcohol, one part tea tree oil, and one part warm water, mix and comb through wet hair leave on overnight, or as long as possible, then shampoo out.

To kill lice: spread mayonnaise over your child's head and then put a shower cap on them overnight. It will smother the little buggers. Nice.  

How do they spread? Lice do not jump or fly, but swing from head to head on a hair shaft, rather like six-legged blood-sucking Tarzans. Suggest your kids try to stop rubbing heads together quite so much, and tie long hair back. Please.

How long to I continue treatment for: Keep combing nightly for at least seven days, as that's how long it take the eggs to hatch, and every other day for a month or so. Then do regular checks every month on the whole family.