What we talk about when we talk about head lice

Mostly we talk about being the mom (but also the Terminator nit comb)

Somehow, I avoided getting head lice as a kid, and so did both of my brothers. This was a minor miracle, given that I had thick, curly hair that surely would’ve been a nightmare to comb through. And even though my son’s school has sent out multiple emails in the past warning of head lice outbreaks, my son never got them.

Until last month, when he very much got them.

In retrospect, I feel bad that I didn’t realize what was happening right away. He was scratching a lot, he was complaining of itchiness, he even said the words, “I think I have head lice.” The head lice were like Taylor Swift singing “I gave so many signs” to Bon Iver, but I was clueless, also like Bon Iver. I didn’t know what to look for! I didn’t realize that I probably wouldn’t see actual bugs—what I should have been looking for were eggs, also known as nits, which are tiny, teardrop shaped little white things that firmly attach to the hair shaft.

I figured it out, finally, on the first day of a three day weekend, effectively ruining many plans because we had to remove the head lice before we could do anything else. Did I panic? Well, no, but only because I emotionally shut down and went into quiet Mom Figuring Stuff Out Mode, which is where I hide all feelings from everyone around me so that no one else freaks out. But inside, I had one thought: what am I supposed to do here?

And that’s why I’m writing this post. Thanks to the generosity of many, many internet strangers who shared their experiences in articles, Reddit posts, and even the comments of Amazon products, I figured out the only thing you really need to do to get rid of lice. I’m not saying it’s quick. You do need to have three things:

1. A lot of time

2. A lot of patience

3. An incredibly obsessive personality that will allow you to make lice removal and lice research your entire personality for several days to a week

Luckily, I’m obsessive to the detriment of my own mental health and happiness, so I was good. 😎

Here are a few things I’m going to tell you upfront that helped me not panic about head lice. These are true things that I confirmed via various actual medical websites like the CDC (I don’t know, can we still trust the CDC? They don’t seem to have abandoned their lice information in the same way they’ve abandoned COVID mitigation strategies).

1. Lice don’t live on dogs.

2. Lice are primarily spread via head to head contact. They don’t jump, they don’t fly. I’m not saying you can’t get lice from a hat (I wouldn’t share hats with a lice-infested child!), but head to head contact is a significantly more likely way to transmit them.

3. Lice greatly prefer to be on hair. The eggs cannot hatch on other surfaces—they need the precise temperature of your head to survive.

4. They don’t live long (a couple days, max) on furniture, bedding, etc. You don’t need to, like, fumigate your house or anything.

This is all information I rapidly downloaded into my head as Hollis went to the store to get a lice removal kit. By the time he returned, I had started on my road to becoming a lice expert.

At first, I was convinced that our best bet would be to contact a professional lice removal service. They exist, or at least they do in many cities, including Columbus. I was fully prepared to pay upwards of $300 to get the lice professionally evicted, but Hollis talked me down. Although I was annoyed at the time, ultimately I’m glad because I basically became an amateur lice removal specialist with one client.

The lice removal kit from Rid promised to remove both lice and eggs, although some internet comments told me this was not possible. “The box says it will kill eggs but that’s a LIE,” said one commenter. Regardless, it seemed like a good place to start, so I dutifully applied the weird oil to my son’s head. It didn’t smell bad and it felt fine. It had to sit on his head for about fifteen minutes, so we watched Adventure Time on my laptop as the medicine enacted swift death for any bugs on his head.

The kit included two other items: shampoo and a nit comb. The shampoo is supposed to offer some sort of protective coating that repels lice, but I’m not sure that’s true. If it was, wouldn’t all kids just be using this shampoo all the time? Far be it from me to accuse Rid of lying to me, but they also claimed that the oil suffocated the lice even though it was only on the head for 15 minutes, when some study I found on JAMA said that it can take up to 16 hours of submersion to fully kill lice.

(Whenever Hollis or I say anything about researching something, the other person will be like, “Okay RFK Jr! Doing your own research over here!” But I WAS doing my own research! The Rid instructions certainly weren’t doing it for me!)

And then came the combing. The Rid kit came with its own comb and suggested wiping it on a tissue after each pass through the hair. This part was disgusting. There were little bugs coming off of that comb.

I texted Lauren about this entire ordeal and she sent me an article she remembered reading about professional head lice removal services in New York. Predictably, head lice removal is way more expensive in New York than it is in Ohio. This article was terrifying (paying $1000 every time your family gets lice???) but the comments were extremely helpful. One comment in particular, from someone named beartrap, pointed me in the right direction:

Lice is terrible. You can de-louse by combing, but not the drug store lice comb that comes with the shampoo. The tines are too-wide to catch much of anything except full grown bugs. Get the terminator comb for $10-$15, wash and condition with regular shampoo, and then comb for hours, rinsing the comb under hot tap water whenever it picks up gunk from the head. Repeat every two days until you find absolutely nothing in the hair. Beats the chemicals or paying $$$ for someone else to do the same thing. Laundry doesn't really matter apart from possibly pillowcases.

Thank you, beartrap, wherever you are. I owe you so much.

Like so many people, I’m trying to avoid shopping on Amazon, but I don’t know where the heck else you buy a lice comb called The Terminator on short notice. So I overnighted that bad boy and let me tell you…beartrap was right. And the comments on the Terminator’s Amazon page? Every single one written by an angel. Angels who helped me figure out a strategy to almost get rid of the lice completely in a matter of hours. Messy, conditioner filled hours, but mere hours nonetheless.

Basically, I coated my son’s hair in Pantene conditioner. You want something thick and white, because this will help you see the bugs. Then, I used the Terminator to slowly and repeatedly comb through his hair, wiping the comb on a white paper towel after each pass. There were bugs there. It was gross, but also…okay, it was satisfying. I felt like I was accomplishing something, you know? This took hours, even with his short hair. I cannot imagine what it would be like with long hair, or thick hair. Sidenote: I thought that cutting his hair short might be a good strategy, but one professional lice remover I found said that this can actually make it harder for you, because lice can lay eggs on even very short hair and then you’ll have a harder time combing.

After finishing the combing and then washing and blow drying his hair (heat is supposed to be bad for the bugs, and I don’t know if a blow dryer can really get hot enough to kill them but it seemed like it couldn’t hurt), I looked through his hair and found…nothing. Certainly no bugs, but not even any eggs. Those eggs were still visible after using Rid and their stupid ineffective comb. Thank God for the Terminator, and the internet!

And if you’re wondering if my son sat quietly and patiently the entire time…I mean, he’s a child. Of course he thought this was uncomfortable, but he was getting to watch literal hours of Adventure Time so he was pretty happy. This week he was like, “We don’t watch as much Adventure Time as we did when I had lice.”

I combed twice a day for a few days—a big comb early in the day and a quick, conditioner-free comb at night. I washed his bedding every day, including any pillows he leaned against on our couch. After about a week, I did the follow-up treatment that Rid recommended, although by that point I didn’t trust them at all. I genuinely think the conditioner and combing would have been enough.

I was afraid his school was going to make him stay home if they found out he had lice, but I decided to tell his teacher anyway because

1. I can’t lie and I felt too guilty not saying anything, and

2. If they wanted to give him another comb-through and help me out, they could have at it! Frankly, I dared them to find a bug on him.

The school didn’t really care. I love his school, but I have found that schools in general are pretty whatevs about illness now. Their policy is essentially “follow your heart <3” when it comes to sending your sick child to school.

I do think that I surprised the people around me by not panicking in this gross situation. I know that reading through this, you might be like, “you spent every second of a three-day weekend reading about lice…what is that if not panicking?” And I would just like to say…for me, this is low-key. For me, this is staying calm.

At first, I kept thinking, “Okay, when is the mom going to step in here and take care of this problem?”…until I realized that I am the mom. Maybe this sounds stupid to you, but even now, even almost nine years into my parenting life, I am still sometimes surprised that I’m the one in charge. It seemed incomprehensible to me that I would be the one to fix this situation because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know the beginning of what to do…remember, I didn’t even know what lice looked like! How was I, a lice novice, supposed to fix this problem?

But…I did. Because I had to, because there really was no one coming to save me. This is a realization I’ve had over and over, because there are constantly parenting situations like this. Hollis had to go to work after securing that dishonest box of Rid. It was only me at home…me and my internet access. When my son got assigned the role of maggot (?) in the school’s bug musical, I was on my own when it came to coming up with some sort of costume (using the term costume loosely here). When he was a baby and he was up all night, it was just me up with him. I was the mom. I am the mom.

It can be easy to meet these situations with resistance or resentment, and I’m not acting like I’ve never felt that way. During those sleepless infant nights, for example, I was not my best and most beautiful self at all. But in my better moments, and in this one, I felt so proud to be the mom. Figuring out this lice situation was, I’m not kidding, empowering. My kid had a problem and I fixed it. All by myself! When my kid has a problem, or a need, or a request, I’m there to handle it. What I don’t know, I can figure out. What I don’t understand, I can research. I am the mom.

I waited to write this post until I was sure the lice were gone, but it’s been over a month now and there’s no sign of eggs or itching so I think we’re good (until the next round rips through the school). I find myself missing our endless combing hours in the bathroom, laughing at Jake and Finn and Lumpy Space Princess (my personal fave, ilu LSP). We got through it together, and we had a good time. I sent a friend a picture of my son in the midst of the hair treatment, and they texted back, “lol why does he look so happy?” It felt good to turn a gross moment into a good one. It felt good to be the mom.

Next week it’s the monthly roundup for paid subscribers. I’ve been watching and reading so much and I have a lot of great recommendations to share with you. Coming up soon: it’s Big Biography Summer (we’re reading the Jim Henson bio and I’ll share our schedule soon) and I’m bringing back Summer of Cher because I want to watch a few more Cher movies. Okay, that’s it for now! If you have any lice questions, feel free to ask because I kinda do think I could become a professional lice removal expert now. I floated the idea to Hollis and he was weirdly into it…I think he wants me to make this my side hustle. See you soon. xo