Got Lice Eggs? Welcome to School!

I think that they should be sent home and washed and clean until none is left. It is no fun to have those things jumping from one to the other. It has happen before. I am clean, my children are clean and I expect them to stay that way. It is not going to hurt them staying home to get clean.

I am a School Nurse. The criteria for deciding to keep a child with nits in school goes beyond what has been stated above. For example, nits need warmth in order to hatch. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if the nits are more than 1/4" from the scalp, they are not viable. The nits are cemented onto the hair when it is laid. As the hair grows, the nit gets further from the scalp and the warmth of the scalp. Therefore, if a nit is more than 1/4" from the scalp, it is not new and doesn't have the right conditions to hatch. In the past, we were sending kids home that had just one nit, even if it was 3" from the scalp. Does that make sense? Most of you are having an uninformed, emotional reaction to the lice issue - please get the facts. If the no nit policy was working in the past, why did we still have lice in kids? I can tell you stories about kids who were sent home for nits by non-School Nurses, but the nits turned out to be dandruff, residue from too much hair gel or hair spray, and once it was residue from dried on bubble bath. Lice do not jump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They crawl!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you want good, valid information about lice, google the following: lice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (i.e. lice cdc) - that explains everything that you want to know about lice. By the way, I don't lke lice either - I had them when I was a brand new RN while working in the hospital. I blamed my job, but I was also apartment-sitting, and most likely they were in the mattress of the person whose apartment I was staying in. Also, of the thousands of heads that I have checked, I have very rarely seen live lice; just know that if you see any slow movng insect in your chld's hair or on a towel after they wash their hair, that is lice.

This is completely ignorant! Lice are parasites and can transmit disease. I'd be mad as hell if I found out a kid with lice was allowed to stay in school and possibly infect my child. It costs a fair amount of money to treat an infestation along with the headache it causes with sterilizing everything. Seriously, I'd be mad as hell.

all these schools are interested in is the money they will miss out on when kids are not at school

I think they need to stay home.

all four of my children had lice in the 80;s which in return gave my husbank and i lice. When I found out about thel lice, ofcourse i treated all the children include myself and my husband, washed everything in site in lysol not once but 3 times, had a carpet man shampoo my carpets and furniture, i rented a hefa vac cleaner for my mattresses, scrubed all wood, even walls with lysol. after several days of staying home and giving them another lice shampoo and pull the nits from the hair, they went back to school. But in the mean time, I called the school and told them and wanted the health dept to check every head of hair on the kids in school. When I think that they did and the health dept checked the heads of the kids, they went back to school. But guess what?
the school never called the health dept about the lice as they told me they will, so my kids went back to school, they got lice again two weeks later.

At the time it was very expensive to treat the kids, especially when my husband was a police officer making about 25,000 a year.
When they came home with lice again i was livid. I contacted the school, the contact the board of health and they were not informed about lice going around and the school did not call them.

As it was I sued the school for over 2,000.00 to get rid of the lice twice, and not notifying the board od health (at that time)

Not only I got my 2,000 back, but my attorney's fee paid for.

This is what you have to do. If you can't afford an atty, take them to small claims court for nearly nothing. Everyone heads should be checked by a nurse and sent home. As for the new rule, I would not send my kids back to school until everyone was cleaned of nits, and lice, and the room was santized completely, and want proof of it also.My children did not have anyone over the house for weeks, and then I called up the mothers to see how well they cleaned the hous and the child's hair. Call me a clean freak if you wish, but this is disquisting. After that, the board of health always came to inspect. The child that had lice or nits were sent home until cleaned and not to return back to the school unless they were checked by a nurse. My daughter had very long curl hair, I couldn't take out off the nits, I couldn't bring her to a beautician, so I got the sicors and cut it myself all off, yes she cried but that's they way it goes, and on my 3 boys it was a hand full to clean the nits off, but I wored at it for hours, I would not dare take them to a barber and expose everyone. There hair was washed twice a week for 2 weeks.

So, don't listen to the school, your children's health is more important. by the way they were in middle school them.

Thanks for listening to me
Sarah from Virginia.

lice are parasites plain and simple. No nit policy should be enforced. Lucky for me it was the daycare and neighbor's was where my kids got it. and I could take steps to avoid further infestation. And as far as being a school nurse if you were any good you would be working in private practice.

Debbie, I have been a pediatric nurse for 15 years and a pediatric nurse practitioner for over 10 years. I took the school nurse job so I can work around my kids' school schedules. Please don't tell me I am not good at my job. You don't know me. Besides, I made my decision based on recommendations by the AAP and National Association of School Nurses, of which I am a member. They are reputable medical organizations, able to guide policy making based on scientific data. I would not say the same about your uneducated opinion.

This is ridiculous. Really. Do you even understand how expensive it is to treat lice? You should rethink your policy. Nits are going to be lice. They are lice eggs. No-nit policies should be enforced in schools and childcares. People like you are just keeping the lice problem ongoing.

Anita, respectfully, how can you say nits and head lice are not contagious when a child goes to an infected child's home and catches them? Head lice are, by nature, travelers and opportunistic, looking for clean healthy hair and heads and our experience was of exactly what I am saying. My daughters slept over one night in an infected home, in the rooms of infected children and we had an eight week nightmare on our hands. We ended up (after all the useless over the counter poisons and old wives tails) ending the cycles with a natural remedy bought over the Internet and only after two weeks of being nit, egg and lice free, did our children return to their schools. The number of days a mother has to take off work should not be a factor in deciding if it is good to send them back or not.

Tramey,
I understand how expensive it is to treat lice. I have also read the box and it says kills lice and their nits. It says nothing about removing them, have you ever had 3 kids with head lice, treated them, treated the home and removed all the nits in one day. My child went to school and they found one nit and sent her back home. Our school has a no nit policy, the nurse told me that the nit was empty but it was policy. I took my daughter up there 3 times that day and she found a total of 2 nits and they both were empty.

Kayte, I did not say lice are not contagious. They are. Nits are not contagious. They don't move off of hair without some degree of force. They certainly don't crawl from head to head like lice do.

The AAP has found that there is no difference in the incidence of head lice in schools that enforce a no nit policy versus a no lice policy. But schools with a no lice policy have a much better attendance record. I researched this very thoroughly before creating the policy at my school.

It is a shame for a child to miss days or weeks of school for something that is not dangerous. Contrary to popular belief, lice to not carry germs, do not spread disease, and do not harm children in any way. It's the ick factor that make people hate them.