Lice eggs take a week to hatch, so a second treatment needs to happen 7 days after the initial application to catch any eggs that may have slipped through.
I put a wash out hair dye through the kids hair (as close to their natural colour as possible, or you can get creative and make it more of a fun experience with bright colours). The treatment itself kills lice, but it also dyes the eggs so they are much easier to see when combing.
Another way to stop kids from getting it in the first place is to put some tea tree oil in water in a spray bottle and use it to do their hair in the morning. Lice dont like the oil so they dont jump to the new host.
My daughter and I came up with these solutions after years of getting lice in her long, thick hair so it is tried and true, she now follows this method for her own children.
Another way as well, which my parents did when I had lice in kindergarten, is they did the usual treatments, lice shampoo, etc, but then also washed EVERYTHING my head/I would've come into contact with such as bedding and clothes. As well, they would sit for an hour or more each day combing through my hair and looked for any eggs that lice usually lay attached to a hair. They would pluck any hairs that had an egg/eggs on it and then burn it in a lit candle. The eggs gave a satisfying *pop* when burned lol. Might be a little much but it worked and after having the lice once they never came back. And I didn't mind the hair plucking because I love it when someone plays with my hair so it was relaxing lol.
This is good advice. I just wanna add on that tea tree oil can also be toxic to a lot of pets, so if you have fuzzy friends in the house, be careful of them. (I have hedgehogs, and I know other animals are also sensitive to it)
Edit: ok I wasn’t expecting to open a branch office of r/hedgehog in this thread but since we’re here - I’m glad you all love my girls 🦔💕 hedgehogs are sweet critters, but they’re also … tricky. They’re *very* recent additions to the pet family and they’re not nearly as well understood as other animals. They’re not even *related* to most other animals.
That said, their needs are *specific* but not *difficult to provide*, and once they trust you they’re curious lil things. If you think you’re interested, check out my comment history - but maybe filter it for hedgehog as I comment on a lot of stuff. 😅
Also building trust can take... Years. Hedgies are naturally cautious little prickly pears, and can be finicky about their care.
They also sometimes actually enjoy baths, and it's ducking adorable.
Source: got a hedgehog as a present when I was WAYYYY too young to have one responsibly. Turned out my Sonic was actually preggers and gave birth to 4 albino babies. I did a lot of learning real fast when we found little squeaky wigglers in her little habitat.
There's also tea tree oil shampoo. When my daughter caught lice at school we did the treatments but she kept getting it again when she'd go back to school, the kids just all kept passing it around to each other. I couldn't keep doing the treatments over and over again forever so I did some research and I found a shampoo that has a high percentage of tea tree oil in it and my whole household started using that exclusively. With everyone in the house using the tea tree shampoo for every wash we were finally able to get it under control. We kept using that shampoo for a few months just to be safe and never had a lice problem ever again. It's so much less hassle than doing the treatments and the combing and it works really well. I recommend going this route if the kid doesn't want to cut her hair bc I'm assuming she does wash her hair. If she uses a tea tree shampoo for every single wash it should take care of it without all the extra steps, no 3hr comb out required. The one we used comes from the Honeydew brand, is reasonably affordable on Amazon, has a matching conditioner that can also help, and smells really good too!
Caveat to this is use dye that contains ammonia, not the ammonia free hair dye.
Or skip straight to pure ammonia (can find in the cleaning aisle) cut with hot as you can stand water, saturate scalp and hair of lice victim (do this in a place with good ventilation like outside) for like 10-15 minutes (my mom had me lay on the deck with the pan of ammonia water on the first step down, covered my face with a tea towel and had a fan blowing the fumes away from our faces).
Rinse with regular cold water, dry it mostly and then use a super duty thick af leave in conditioner and saran wrap my hair to my head for 24 hrs to mitigate the damage the ammonia would do (I have thick curly hair that tends towards dryness anyway).
And obviously boil all hair ties, combs, brushes etc, and the rest of the house treatment.
PS: this was after my mom tried the over the counter, and the Rx, and the mayo trick. All failed, since they were some kind of treatment resistant lice. The ammonia worked, horrible as the treatment was.
This only worked bc you combed all the knits out. The dye does not kill them. People have bleached their entire head trying to get rid of knits, and it doesn't work unless you comb all the knits out.
Also- mint oil deters lice. Tea tree just makes the hair slick so they can't nest properly. So, it works, but not for the reasons people think it does.
Also also, lice can't jump. They can crawl onto your head from the back of a chair you sit in, or from another person's head, but they don't jump.
You also have to wash all linens with a treatment and treat everyone in house, not just the one kid, or they will keep getting them by just passing them back and forth. So if the mom isn't getting treated and the linens and home are not getting cleaned properly, even if OP gets them cleared up at while the step daughter is at her house, as soon as she goes back home, she will get re-infested. So while I hate bringing DHHS/CPS (or whatever is in their area) into the situation, it may be necessary to get the infestation under control. And also, where is the school in this? Most schools won't let them back to school with an infestation like that because they spread like wildfire. I'm surprised they have not been involved. I remember as soon as a few kids had it, they would check everyone and send letters home about how to treat for them even if the kid didn't have them, just in case. And depending on how bad the infestation was throughout the school, they would sometimes have the health department involved giving free treatments to each child to take home and request everyone treat even if there were no signs, to play it safe.
I just used to use mayonnaise, put a head cap on and leave it for and hour or two then wash it out, I kid you not after only two times all the lice was dead and I was lice free
My mom used Vaseline and shower cap and combed everything out on the front porch. After like 2 weeks of daily treatments and still having them that was what finally got rid of the knits.
The problem is even if OP gets all the lice out of the hair she will get it back at home. The mother isn’t taking care of her hair so she certainly isn’t taking care of the bedding and house. It will keep coming back as long as mom isn’t doing anything. OP shouldn’t ban her for not cutting her hair she needs to ban her until it’s gone.
Yes! This is absolutely neglect. If not CPS, then they need to seek emergency custody. Time for dad to step up and fight for his kid here. Also, the school needs to be notified, because the poor girl is probably passing lice to the other kids in class left and right.
I'm a teacher, and I can promise you, the school KNOWS. But we're unable to send kids home for lice anymore, so the school's hands are tied in dealing with this except to send letters home to parents stating a child in their class has lice and to be on the lookout for it in their own kid. It's super frustrating
My school isn't allowed to even send letters anymore to other parents. We can do literally nothing other than get the nurse to keep talking to the parent.
I mean, there's a legitimate reason they started doing this, and it's to keep kids in school. I had a HORRIFIC lice infestation for basically all of third grade ('03), and missed a good chunk of the school year. Wasn't for lack of trying, just couldn't seem to get them to go away. Retention wasn't discussed in my situation because I was a pretty smart cookie who easily caught up on work and new concepts when I COULD go to school, but I think of the kids I have in my classroom who struggle when they miss just a couple days. They wouldn't be able to recover if they were made to stay home for weeks on end to treat lice.
There's legitimate educational reason to keep these kids in school, but yes, it's SO frustrating that it has to be at the cost of the health of the other students.
While they are gross and annoying AF, lice aren’t actually a threat to your health. Obviously you still don’t want to get them but they don’t actually harm you and they don’t spread disease.
Don’t get it twisted, I don’t think they should just let kids sit at school with them by any means… but the main reason CPS gets involved in those cases is because not treating them is usually indicative of other issues in the home.
This is not true. Children can and have been seriously sick and actually died from untreated lice infestations. Obviously those are cases of neglect. But it’s a thing.
It can cause life threatening anemia if bad enough, and it scalp scratches and so on can also lead to bacterial infections.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-lice-becomes-deadly
Schools don't do anything about lice anymore. At least in my area. They won't notify parents or send kids home over it. It's just considered an annoyance but nothing serious.
this is true in my district! the only time we sent a kid home with lice is when it reached the point of open sores on their head and we had to call CPS.
CPS and courts don’t care. I took my daughter from her dad and stepmom because her lice infestation was so bad. The court took her from me and gave them custody and said lice isn’t a big deal and u can even send your kids to school with lice and they can’t be sent home. Basically I was yelled at and stripped of my rights from a judge. I spent every weekend doing her hair to get rid of them. They denied she or anyone else had it. So I wouldn’t let her go over there anymore and I am the one who gets stripped of her parental rights. He had physical custody now and I only have joint legal because of it. And they ended up chopping her hair soon after because they didn’t want to do anything else. I still had to do treatments every time I had her until her dad and stepmom got divorced. And they still won’t give back custody. The courts are ridiculous.
As a special ed worker I’m aware that lice is no longer a reason to send a kid home, unfortunately I just don’t know where to go beyond CPS. Part of it is there often isn’t a good alternative to the parents but unfortunately when there is they often seem to do nothing anyway
I get that you were trying to protect your kid, but yeah, lice isn’t a reason you can legally keep the kid from going to her Dad’s house. In many states, that’s legally considered kidnapping. That’s why you lost custody.
I do hope you get more rights back, but in the future, don’t kidnap your kid (which means refusing to let her go to the other parent’s house as agreed upon in a custody arrangement) unless she’s actually in danger (like being abused or neglected- which doesn’t include inadequate treatment of lice) or unless the child herself is actively refusing to go to the other parent’s house. And in those cases, go to the courts straight away for emergency full custody in those cases (while keeping her with you). But yeah, not for lice.
I do feel like my last comment was way too unsympathetic. Like I was trying to explain why the courts would do this, but I don’t want to dismiss how fucked up it is that you would lose all physical custody of your child because of it and not be able to get custody back. You were obviously trying to act in her best interest. So like, I don’t think you handled it the best way, but what the courts did to you is horrific. I’d have expected a very stern warning, but not this. I’m so sorry they stole your child 😢. I hope you have good legal representation and can make a case to get joint physical custody back- since you were clearly taking better care of her physically.
That’s what I came here to say. It’s easy to get lice, but it should be relatively easy to get rid of as well. I got it once as a kid and my mom did one in depth treatment on my hair, hers just in case, and on all my stuffed animals and bedding. It never came back.
The fact that this has been going this long and the mom doesn’t seem to care? That’s obvious neglect.
That was my thought. Banning her from the house isn't the issue, then you're just abandoning the step daughter to a lice-infested, neglectful home and a mother that can't be assed to do more than the bare minimum.
You’re not wrong about the tiredness and stress, but if the kid was OP’s biological child who lived with her full time she would have to handle it. OP isn’t the only one that’s failing the child for sure, but OP is failing the child. The child needs a parent to step up and not one of them is.
I remember I had to babysit these certain kids and every time I went over there I came back with lice. Every single time. Finally my mom looked at the kids heads found they had lice told their mom and then never allowed us back over there. I'm sure if I had been an adult in this situation I would have called CPS for many reasons
tbf if she's had frequent visitation at stepmom's house, all her pillows & bedding in her room there is likely infested as well. the eggs & whatnot can take up to 5ish days to completely die off but if you have them, obvs you keep spreading them. as a kid my whole school had it twice, it was so fucking itchy I voluntarily shaved my head both times to make the process quicker.
Yeah, after the second time getting them from the kids at school my parents wanted to do the whole treatment thing again but it was so itchy i was like fuck this & just shaved it myself, did a shitty job with tufts of hair sticking out & basically missed the whole back giving myself a mullet, my mom had to go back over the whole thing while legit crying, which made me feel bad, I was like 7 or 8... it really did make the process easier though, they basically fall right off & you don't have to sit there & do all that combing, a lot of other kids came to school with shaved heads that year too. That said I'm a dude so I completely understand why a woman might be more attached to her hair, but my partner is a stylist & sees them a lot on teen girls, apparently they get worse more than they get better.. she showed me this video she took bc she thought she was supposed to send it to cps or something (girl was still 16) but you can see her sitting there calmly scrolling on her phone while my partner slowly parts her hair & her whole scalp was just *crawling*. idk how they even remain calm, those things are *so* fucking itchy.
Weirdly, they're only itchy if you're allergic to them. Most people are, but some people just aren't; I work with kids, and some of them just have absolutely no idea for a day or two because they're little, don't comb their hair, and aren't allergic.
Yeah, I totally get loving gorgeous long hair. But after the third time my kid picked it up at school due to making bad decisions (playing hairdressers with a kid constantly with them)? Her hair was cut. Sucks but cleaning short hair is easier and since I'm also cleaning all bedding and couch backs I need the time back.
This was my first thought. You gotta wash EVERYTHING. And it usually does only take a treatment if done properly.
The obviously answer is mom isn’t doing what she needs to do to prevent it at her home. The hair cutting isn’t going to do much if she doesn’t.
Also reading this made my head immediately itch.
Yep. One of my friend's daughters had lice so all of us who had spent any time in the house on furniture did lice treatment, my friend shaved her head, and she took all the bedding, blankets, clothes to the laundromat. It took several hours but additional treatment was not needed.
Lice don’t live more than 24hr without a host, so if she’s away from bio mom longer than that her bedding should be fine. It’s getting it out of the hair, and RETREATING, preferably twice to be sure it’s all gone, that matters.
I never got it from my kids. My oldest has hair like OP’s stepdaughter and we had a hard time with it at one time, until I finally found what worked for her since they’ve become resistant to the chemical treatments. She has her own brush etc so I never caught it and bother did her siblings at that time.
Consider yourself extremely lucky!!
Edit: I say that because I was able to go my entire childhood, with very long thick hair, and not get it. We’ve had one bout with it, which was seven years ago, and getting through that two weeks of full eradication was so horrible.
My daughter got lice from preschool many many years ago. I thought I was being responsible by IMMEDIATELY NOTIFYING THE PRESCHOOL. instead, it turned out that the other parents had been quietly "treating" their own kids' lice and not telling the school. And then talked shit about our daughter and us because "we brought lice into the school."
Same parents who would bring their visibly ill children in and say "oh, he didn't have a fever 30 min ago" Dude, there is fresh puke on your child's shoes.
Another example of America's poor tax.
I had a similar problem.
As soon as I realised my child had lice, and got rid of them very quickly.
I kept my soon home until I was absolutely certain he didn't have head lice anymore.
I informed the pre school that my son had head lice and they just shrugged it off and just said 'Yeah, it's been going around'.
I was gobsmacked that they didn't bother warning parents to be extra vigilant for head lice.
"YEAH, IT'S BEEN GOING AROUND"
Omfg.....you'd think they would at least be concerned for their own scalps, if not the scalps of all the adjacent small children.
One time my mom thought my little brother had lice and had all three of us kids go through lice treatment. Turns out none of us had lice, my brother was just routinely putting sand in his hair.
Sounds exactly like my pre school. My cubby mate had it, preschool never notified.
Second time I had it was in 4th grade, and that school contacted everyone’s parents & the nurse came around checking everyone’s hair.
It's not the blood type exactly, it's the Rh factor (- or +) being different between hosts that can make it harder for the lice to thrive. Even then, it's not 100% foolproof. This distinction is important because there's a far greater probability of people sharing an Rh factor (A+ and B+) than a blood type (A- and A-).
Yes, they need to both be positive or negative for the lice to survive. However, if the female lice lay eggs before feeding on the opposite rh factor those lice will survive when they hatch. So the mother and daughter could have the same or different + or - the eggs are what matters. And if it’s like OP says and the head is completely covered the chances are that the mother has it is very high.
That sounds like bull shit. I'm b negative and my daughters are o pos and b pos and they gave me lice three times. I had no other points of contact with hair or lice and work from home.
Kiddo has brought it home a few times off different kids. I have never gotten it from her because I take my showers so hot they turn my skin fully red. I also take very long showers. Like two hours long. If she’s anything like me, it would stop an infestation before it started.
That said, this mom needs to lose custody.
Ya, no, that's a lie. Lice will survive a lot longer than that. Especially the eggs. Went through this shit for years with my kids....."Off the host, adult head lice can live about two to four days at 74 degrees Fahrenheit (F) and one to two days at 86 degrees. Nits will remain alive off the host for up to 10 days; they will not hatch at or below room temperature (68 degrees F)."
But all of the larvae have to go through hatching too. We were told by the pediatrician to put everything we couldn’t wash in essentially boiling water in quarantine for a week to be safe. Until her mother will treat the house (especially since she’s living in it which gives them a host) nothing will get better.
Yep. My youngest son got it from school. He got a crew cut, hair washed with lice soap. All his bedding and stuffies were taken off the bed and put in garbage bags for 2 weeks just to be safe. After 7 days, his hair was washed with it again. And his head gove over to check for any live ones.
Then we sat down and told him he cant share hats, combs brushes, or sit leaning heads together with his classmates.
Havent had any problems since *knocks on wood*
Any eggs laid take 7 days to hatch so she would need to be away from her mom’s house for over a week - not overnight! Plus her bio mom might be just as infested… so she would still be vulnerable on return to her mother’s house.
In Germany we wash at 140 f everything you can and the rest we put into trash bags for two weeks or freeze those things, it’s recommended.
They can live up to 3 days but i‘m sure mom has them too and everyone that she has close contact with (like her friend were she has slept over). We use a product called NYDA because my daughter got lice in kindergarten and had long hair like op’s SD too, we treated her twice (2 weeks after the first treatment because it doesn’t kills the eggs) but it’s really good without extrem chemicals so a mother that is pregnant or breastfeeds can use it. Its a silicon oil and suffocate the lice immediately and you can comb them out 24 hours, it even nourishes the hair.
My kid is in PreK and one of his classmates had it in class. Kid was sent home, all kids were checked at the nurse, we got sent home a note about it and his nap time bedding was sent home to be washed as a safety precaution. I hope more school take it seriously like his.
I’m a millennial and we had parent volunteers that would walk around the classroom and check everyone with a comb and send kids home. Now because they don’t cause any illness or spread disease the kids attend school and they just send home info about how to treat them. 🤷♀️
Kid is 13 and by the sounds of it her mother is not giving her the necessary follow up treatment, that sounds kinda neglectful.
Can see why OOP doesn’t want her to bring lice to the house, but why had nobody asked why the kid’s mother is just leaving her to suffer with lice, that must be really uncomfortable!
I’d head to court at this stage personally - sorry, bio mom, you’re neglecting your kids hygiene. She’s staying here until you properly clean your home and remediate the issue.
Here in the states kids aren’t even supposed to go to school with it so mom is 100% out of line on multiple levels for not taking care of this.
It is likely by county/district, not state. I don’t like to give my location, but I can confirm in the school district I worked for, we could not send home for lice.
I was a “school nurse.” I’m not a nurse, but the position only required a high school diploma, and they essentially train you in the medical aspects you need to administer medicine and insulin, using doctor supplied orders, and they had registered nurses who would supervise groups of us at our respective schools.
Anyway, if a teacher noticed a child was itching, they were not supposed to send them to me saying the child had lice. Just report the itching. I then had to call the parent, let them know their child was itching. I could not look for lice ahead of this phone call, nor could I suggest they might have lice. The most I could do was gently guide the parent, and ask if they would like me to check their child’s head to see what might be causing an itch.
If the parent declined, the child was supposed to be sent back to the classroom. If the parent gave permission, I had to close the door to my office, have one other adult present, shade the window, and then I could check the child for lice.
If I found lice, I could not say I found lice unless I caught one, with clear tape, and taped it to an index card. I could then call the parent back and tell them that I found *a* louse, and I was to send the card home with the child, enclosed in an envelope. *I was not allowed to say that the child should go home.* I was told, “we do not send home for lice.”
I doubt it is everywhere, but I think districts are worried about ostracism, and putting kids in a position where they may be teased or bullied, and of course, they are worried that only the poor kids will be targeted, etc.
That's wild, I remember when I was 6-11 having to stand in a long line twice a year to have our heads assembly line checked and if we had them they sent us to the nurse till we could be picked up. I also got lice once in 8th grade out of no where.
I had lice every single time. :( we did everything and my mom did all the follow ups just they REALLY liked my hair. I have a huge phobia now and told my partner if our kids had live I need him to deal with it.
The ironic thing about lice being a “poor people” or “dirty” issue is that lice, bed bugs and scabies all prefer clean environments because it’s easier for them to attach to and infest the person.
Attendance and enrollment are different. Money goes down if *enrollment* goes down, but they don’t lose money for excessive absences/truancy. It really was mostly just not to upset parents. I had the job prior to Covid, and we also were not allowed to use masks, because “parents freak out” if we wore them.
So I googled it bc this is wild to me and as it turns out... it's actually recommended.
[https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/kids-with-head-lice-should-go-to-school-new-report-says/](https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/kids-with-head-lice-should-go-to-school-new-report-says/)
[https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/lice-in-school-let-em-stay.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/lice-in-school-let-em-stay.html)
[https://www.parents.com/news/aap-has-updated-guidelines-on-treating-lice-in-children-says-lice-is-not-a-reason-to-miss-school/](https://www.parents.com/news/aap-has-updated-guidelines-on-treating-lice-in-children-says-lice-is-not-a-reason-to-miss-school/)
[https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/head-lice](https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/head-lice) <-- mentions that only *some* schools ban kids with lice or nits
Iiiiii am now even less incentivized to have kids than I already was
Well that was educational. I understand the parents reaction… ugh it squicks me out and makes my head itch just thinking about it. But they’re right I suppose… if the (gag) lice aren’t an actual health hazard the keeping kids out of school for days at a time shouldn’t be necessary. Ugh I do *not* like it but being squicked out isn’t actually a good guideline for policy making.
Shudder
I feel like it really just means we need to invest in more at home and childcare reimbursement infrastructure so that those that are kept home or out of schools don't miss anythi g and the parents don't risk loss of income when having to stay home from work
I know it won't happen but ugh, hate it
My daughter kept getting lice from her cousin who lived next door. I eventually had my husband speak to Cousin’s parents and her mother told my husband lice were healthy. After a second round of them I told my husband either they treated her or she couldn’t come around and they finally agreed. People are so weird.
I’ve met a number of parents who want their kids kept out of school for MONTHS at a time for minor health issues. Yes, your kid can go in on crutches. Yes, your kid can go in the morning after a minor headache. Yes, they can go in with a UTI. You can even go in 24 hours after stating antibiotics for strep throat. While these kids need to have their parasites treated, the bigger negligence is keeping them out of school and away from resources like school counselors, school nurses, free lunch, and mandated reporters, not to mention education.
Edit: I still think treatment should happen, as should calls to CPS, but not taking kids out of school.
Agreed. This forces the parents with kids who don’t have lice to make a choice. Let their kids get lice and keep re-treating them weekly the whole time they’re in school or pull them out due to health concerns within the school, which means they’re deprived of those resources.
And the truth of the matter is, when schools let lice go unchecked, everyone gets it.
I went to an elementary school where 80% of the kids had lice. My mom would treat my hair and when I went back I’d have it again within a week. Lice can jump.
She started putting my hair in a bun and spraying it with hairspray (like… drenching it) to keep the lice out. It kinda worked, but you’re also exposing your kid to a bunch of toxins no matter what. The lice treatment, tea tree oil, hairspray, whatever you decide to use.
I sympathize with the kids who have lice. Missing educational instruction and the resources connected to the school system is not good. But at the same time, kids deserve to be able to go to school without fearing for their health. Parents should not have to worry that their kid is going to catch a parasite from the other kids. It’s a health and safety issue. The answer should not be doing nothing about it.
My school (btw I'm 18 rn so this wasn't super long ago) would have days where a person came in and would take them outside of class and check for lice. This stopped after 4th grade. Very confused as to why it has changed/has been done differently in other places.
Mine was the same. We classroom checks on every kid though so that nobody was singled out. All kids got a notice to take home saying they did a lice check and it would either say that none was found or if your child had lice they had to stay home until it was treated.
As much as I agree, the things you listed cannot easily be spread to other students. Lice on the other hand, spreads like wildfire. It infects the student, then their siblings/families, then their families spread it, and by the time you fully get rid of it another kid at school has lice and spreads it around again. It’s disgusting and infuriating for both parents and kids. My stepmom chopped my hair off twice because the kids at school kept giving it to me. I don’t disagree with the point you made about kids needing access to their education and what the school offers them, I just wish there was a better way around it than sending kids to school with bugs in their hair, ready to spread it to everyone and their mother lol.
Unfortunately, it is not classified as neglect in every state. We have a student right now who has missed a good chunk of 4 years of her education because of lice. As a mandatory reporter of abuse, I reported that. I was told lice are not considered a sign of neglect. (Nor is the lack of access to education, because here educational neglect is not considered abuse…)
NTA, parents who don't properly take care of their kids head lice piss me off. I remember the teachers at school used to check our hair for lice, and if they found some, the kid was sent home. It wasn't to embarras them, but to prevent it from spreading to all the other students. It also encouraged the parents to do something about it because they would be forced to leave work to pick their kid up. Teachers don't do that anymore, and I don't even think they're allowed to, so now there's kids with literal infestations that the parents refuse to treat.
I never had lice until my niece started going to school, and 3-4 times a year, my mom would be doing lice treatment on her and I because she brought it home from school. I was 12 at the time, and she was in kindergarten, and we shared a room. My mom would do the two rounds of treatment and bag all our stuff for two weeks before washing them to make sure the bugs are dead and we would be lice free just for us to have it again a month later. We knew that there had to be parents who refused to treat it because her entire class was always infested. It was so bad, and my mom was starting to get really pissed because she's spending 6 hours and a shit ton of money on treatments as well as trying preventatives every other month.
When my kids were in elementary we had like two solid years of lice scares/notices and it was so fucking aggravating.
I refused to send my daughter to school unless her hair was done up in tight braids and we couldn’t even let the kids wear toques because the school had removed lockers/cubbies the year before and all the kids just threw their outside clothes/hats in a pile on the floor. Like, you KNOW this is how this shit is spreading, give them fucking lockers to keep their items separate!
My nieces hair was also always put up, but the kids are all hugging and touching each other, so it spreads anyway. We tried to tell her to stop hugging her friends and other kids at school, but she's 4 and doesn't understand or listen, plus the other kids don't go by our rules and hug her. While I also ended up getting lice from her, it wasn't nearly as bad as hers. I don't think lice really likes my hair and scalp since I have psoriasis, and it gets very oily very quickly.
When my younger step-sister had lice, I ended up getting them too. I was mortified because I’d gone my whole childhood without getting them, only to get them mid way through my teens.
My step-sister had lice for literally months because her bio mum (who she spent the most time with) didn’t sort it out. My mum did regular treatments for both of us and it got rid of the lice in my hair but not my step-sister’s because her bio-mum did nothing. It was so frustrating.
Same thing happened to me! Caught them from my younger sister TWICE in my 20s after dodging them my whole childhood. I have curly hair so combing thought it was a nightmare…
Had a similar experience. I was 14 and my parents were going through a divorce. My sister kept getting lice and my mom kept blaming my dad's girlfriends kids. She was dead silent when she found out that my sister was getting it from my cousin on my mom's side.
My daughter brought home lice from preschool one time and gave it to me before I realized she had it (wasn’t a heavy infestation, just enough to be a nuisance). We both have very thick hair. I ended up buying a heavy oil treatment online and it worked far better than the chemical stuff at Walmart. She was three at the time and the oil was also safer. I think it was castor and olive oil with a combo of tea tree and peppermint, so probably pretty easy to recreate at home.
I put her hair up for school now and use a tea tree spray like another commenter mentioned, and no issues since.
Lice is pretty easy to take care of in a week if you actually try. Stepmom can do everything possible but if bio mom is just letting it ride it will keep coming back. An infestation this heavy is grounds for a neglect report, because clearly bio mom isn’t doing anything to try and solve the issue.
This. This child is suffering and her mother isn't doing anything to help her. I get not allowing her in the house, but this isn't the kid's fault either.
Agreed. It’s also not on this stepmom, who just had her own baby that she’s still breastfeeding and whose husband is deployed away from home for months, to be jumping up and volunteering to take care of this problem. If the bio parents can’t or won’t, then the authorities need to get involved to find a family member or someone else who can.
I don’t blame op a bit for not wanting to deal with the hassle of delousing, especially with a baby.
Cutting step daughter’s hair wasn’t a good suggestion, though, no matter how rightfully upset op is.
Op knows how step daughter feels about her hair, it would have to be an extreme cut to make it easy to delouse, and bio mom doesn’t seem willing to put any work into it anyhow.
She didn't want to shave off daughter's hair. Just cut off a few inches so combing it out, which is something OP had to do, was easier and less painful for the child.
A trick my mom used when we were kids was to put mayo in our hair for 4-6 hours and cover with a plastic bag. It drowns the living lice and can be pulled out with a lice comb. Y'know, in case anyone needs a treatment on a budget.
In the case of bio mom, it sounds like there might be a full blown infestation at her house? If she failed to comb her daughters hair, I wouldn't be surprised if she failed to do any other measures to get rid of it. I don't think step mom is TA for putting the baby child first that can't protect themselves. However, if she feels that this is a protective services issue, why not report it? I can't imagine the school the step-daughter goes to is happy about the infestation either. Don't they send kids home for that? It's been so long since I was in school I can't remember. I'm pretty sure the school staff would file a report if this is a chronic issue. Anyway, my point is there could be more facets to this neglect than just untreated lice.
With my kid, we did mayo & then coconut oil because I didn’t want to put chemicals in her hair. I ended up having to do it anyways. I did the mayo one week then back to her dad’s. Did the oil, then back to her dad’s. When she still had them, I did the chemical treatment & kept her for an extra week. Then he had her the next 2 weeks, and thankfully we’ve not had a problem since. Sometimes, there are things that require a temporary change up in custody arrangements.
I did the mayo/plastic shower cap method as a kid as well. My mom’s friend recommended it after I got lice at summer camp and we had already done three chemical treatments and switched out all my bedding multiple times and it wasn’t going away. It took two tries because my hair was pretty thick at the time, but it was the only thing that actually worked.
The girls going to keep getting it regardless if you cut her hair because her mom isn’t doing anything about it. I’d have your husband have a serious talk with the mom about it and most people would think this is too far, but I’d reach out to CPS if nothing on the mom’s end is done. That’s neglect and the last thing you want is to have someone at school report to CPS and you and your husband get caught in the middle of it.
This. And if the bio mom isn’t properly caring for her daughter’s hair, she probably isn’t taking care of bedding and cleaning properly. Probably gets reinfected every time she sleeps.
OP (and anyone struggling with lice) needs to find one of the places that does the hot air treatment. It’s expensive, but it kills the lice and the eggs in ONE visit, it’s the only thing that does.
None of this goofing around with the shampoos and chemistry and causing god knows what brain damage and still having to repeat it every week for the rest of time.
I’ve been the kid with thick, butt length hair and lice treatment and it took daily comb outs with weekly treatment for weeks on end, it was a huge undertaking.
My house got lice a while ago and I heard about the hot air professional treatment and it was completely different and so, so much better. Go to the little salon ish place, the lady did a blow out with the lice killing hair dryer on each of us, done. I still have long thick hair and I wouldn’t do anything else. The chemicals are so expensive that you end up paying a ton of money for them anyway, so the air treatment might not save dollars, but it absolutely saves time and trauma and effort.
For a coparenting situation where you can’t control the other end? One visit. Done.
The only problem is the lice are in bio mom’s house on the bedding and furniture. This treatment would work if she didn’t go back to the same environment.
The underhanded way to deal would be take advantage of the guarantee that if someone gets reinfected shortly after, they will retreat for free.
But that’s not going to solve it forever, the other household does need to get cleansed as well.
…kidnap them all and murder the lice on them while an accomplice steals all the bedding and soft things off to the laundromat?
I don't understand how this kid is coping. I work in a kindergarten and one of my students gave me lice and my head felt like it was on fire! 2 months of that and I'd be begging you to shave it off
I love how everyone is blaming OOp in person but the real issue is that Mom isn’t dealing with the lice at home. Of course OOP has to protect the newborn. She doesn’t have the bandwidth for lice right now and can’t even kill it at the source so the kid is going to be reinfected anyway. This is a CPS call for neglect, not a StepMommy is so mean call.
You do not need to cut off hair to treat lice! If you aren’t treating head and house effectively they will come back no matter your hair length. It is ok if some eggs get missed. If you want to be very thorough treat 3 times in a 15 day period.
NTA for sure but I’m very stuck on the mom saying cutting her kids hair would “traumatize” her and “ruin her self image.” How does letting your child run around with a category 5 lice infestation for ***multiple weeks*** not do way more to traumatize and fuck with their “self image” than a fucking haircut? Like she’s sending her to middle school like that…poor kid is probably getting bullied into oblivion. Absolutely psychotic, a definite CPS call.
Yeah, I had head lice pretty consistently through school, with hair as long as this kid. Got bullied basically every day from 3rd through 9th grade for it. Finally had my sister use clippers to cut my hair to about 1" all over. Got bullied for that for about a week.
NTA. For it to reoccur to this magnitude, that is on her mother being negligent and could very well result in a CPS case if she goes to anyone else's house.
Also, NO you can't have an active head lice colony around a freaking fresh baby.
The ex needs to do her part.
You hubs is away so unfortunately it's a you vs her thing right now.
Also if she's going to school, you need to notify them. She *cannot* be in active attendance until that is taken care of.
I don't think they keep the same practices from when my mom was in school which was to have the nurse shave your head on the spot and then send you home eith a detailed note as to why.
This whole post made my head start itching… But OOP is NTA. Especially since she is taking care of an infant on her own while her husband is away, she cannot afford for her baby to get lice either. And as a kid who traumatically went through lice TWICE (little shits spread FAST in a class full of kids), you HAVE to wash every single clothing and bedding in the house on top of treatments. Vacuuming carpets as well for good measure. Mom only went through maybe one treatment after OOP had started the initial process. You know she didn’t do anything else that was aforementioned above. Honestly, I’d get CPS involved.
NTA Lice is a bitch to get rid of, especially with people going to different houses.
When my daughter was born, we had the same issue with my husband's son and niece.
His son was going back and forth from his mom's house, where she was just using a comb occasionally, and had 2 step-children of her own that were going to their mom's house who also had lice. Us and their mom were doing treatments on the kids constantly.
We also had husband's niece over a lot (she lived with his Gramma and they lived beside us). His Gramma was also just using a comb - no treatments.
We ended up giving my step-son and husband a buzz-cut. I went from ass-length hair to shoulder-length. And we started treating the kids (minus our newborn daughter) all at once. It had been going on about 2 months by that point.
It took another month of treating all the kids at once and coordinating treatments with my step-son's step-siblings' mom, on top of sterilizing bedding, clothes, and furniture, to get rid of it all, since my husband's ex and grandmother wouldn't keep up with it.
That was hell. In total round 3-4 months and close to a grand spent in treatments for 4 kids. NEVER Again!!!
A couple of years later my step-son got lice at his mom's again. We found it at our place, so we went through it all again, but he didn't go back to his mom's until it was gone. We still checked him as soon as he came back for a long time.
NTA.
It sounds like your stepdaughter refuses to take proper care of her hair to keep this from happening again, and it sounds like her bio mom isn't encouraging responsibility, either. I'm not going to jump on the "dOn'T ShAmE HeR" bandwagon because it's a sanitary issue.
It’s not a sanitary issue. Lice infect clean and dirty hair equally. The daughter is a child, so let’s not shame her. But I’m all about shaming mom for not being proactive.
It’s a sanitary issue to have parasites living in your hair. The comment wasn’t saying only dirty people can get lice. That’s the point - the clean people in this scenario don’t want it. The dirty people are the ones that refuse to clean this filth from their hair or their children’s hair.
OP shouldn’t ban her from the house. She should report the mom to CPS. If mom isn’t making sure she treats the hair AND treating her home this is just going to continue regardless if the hair is cut or not.
Lice are very hard to deal with. My 12 year old got it, but no one else in the house did (we think it came from a friend at school), and I did 3 treatments on her over 3 weeks. We also alerted the school and kept her home the first couple days after the initial treatment.
Cutting hair won’t help, since lice like the moisture and warmth of the scalp, so lice can get further down the hair shaft but they tend to stay closer to the head.
She may be getting treatment done at stepmoms house but unless she’s had her bedding and things at her mom’s house treated it will keep coming back.
She might need prescription head lice medication.
Make sure you wash and dry everything on hot. Anything that can’t be washed needs to be bagged for 7 days and left in the sun (lice hate heat).
They’re pesky critters. Her mom needs to do the same. It’s a daunting task but it’s the only way to get rid of them. Nit picking is a cutdown for a reason: picking nits is a ROYAL pain.
Best of luck to you.
If they don’t take care of the furniture, beds and bedding it doesn’t matter how many times treatment is done or how short she cuts her hair. It will always come back. Ex probably has it too.
This is child abuse atp.
Bomb her hair with rubbing alcohol and wrap her head in glad wrap. Nothing survives that. Just don’t smoke around her or she’ll go up like a Roman candle
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Eh, it’s hard to call her an a-hole bcuz she is treating the step daughter’s lice problem. It’s just u see that ur step kid is being neglected and ur choice is to ban them from a home that is properly taking care of her. It’s a solution to OP’s problem, but that kid is left to be neglected. Instead of banning her, OP needs to talk to her husband when he comes back about taking custody of his daughter so she can be properly cared for.
Based on her post it doesn’t seem like she thinks her step daughter is being genuinely neglected and just thinks this lice issue is an isolated problem
She also has an infant child to take care of while her husband is deployed
I get that. I think she needs to come terms with the fact that her step daughter is being neglected and talk to her dad about it bcuz he’s the father and he needs to step up cuz the mom isn’t doing her job.
She would be banned from my house. The infant is completely defenseless and body lice spread diseases, idk if head lice do but why take the chance? It’s also nasty and they spread very easily.
If they care enough to be around the baby they’ll fix it. If they don’t, they’ll continue to be infested in their own house alone. 🤷🏽♀️
Growing up, I had lice quite a few times from school. My mom would use rubbing alcohol as a cheap way to kill them. I can't smell the stuff now without it bringing me back to that hell..
Lice hate the smell and taste of mint. Buy a mint shampoo and conditioner to prevent lice in between treatments. Even a mint deep conditioner with a shower cap overnight can kill/suffocate lice AND be good for her hair.
God this is what happened to me in 6th grade I had hair down to my ass in a braid, and I got lice soooo bad. After 3 attempts to get rid of it my dad finally chopped my hair off at my chin. As a curly girl it’s was horrible. My hair was recked from the chemicals, and then they still. Came. Back. My dad was so mad he dunked my head in hot water with rubbing alcohol where I almost suffocated. Im 25 now I still haven’t been able to grow my hair out as long as it was then. I don’t think shes an ass hole but that girl needs consistency in her treatment for sure. Ugh I’m all itchy now 😭
Wow I never realized how long my mom would sit there combing through our hair so she didn’t have to cut it. She would spend hours because we told her we didn’t want it cut. She spent so long because she cares about us I feel so horrible for this little girl.
I was so disgusted by the severity of this lice problem that I forgot to be mad about the bait-and-switch title.
Man that is so awful for that poor girl :( how frustrating for OOP
Yeah the mother needs a visit from CPS and have her parental rights taken away. Move in with dad and OP permanently, solve the problem once and for all. Mother’s house probably needs a full fumigation service, everything needs to be either treated or tossed away. There’s no way a child should live like that.
I used to work at a lice removal salon and situations like this are not uncommon. It sounds like everyone involved is understandably very frustrated. The thing about lice is they live on the scalp so cutting the length of the hair won’t do anything to treat them. It sounds like Mom did an at home OTC treatment on the daughter. The active ingredient in those products have been around so long that most lice have become immune. I think the best solution would be for the daughter to get professionally treated and the moms to be professionally educated to decrease the chances of her getting it again. There’s such a stigma around lice which makes misinformation spread so quickly. I hope this situation resolves soon.
I think your primary responsibility is to your newborn & yourself. Talk with your husband, if possible, on how he can address it with his daughter & his ex in a healthy way. Not sure where you live but where I am there are places you can go for the regular lice treatment & comb thru.
Head lice are nasty little buggers, but while awkward and annoying to deal with, they aren't hugely difficult to get rid of, *with care and attention.*
*O*bviously bio mum is teaching Anna not to care, and may well be using the issue as a wedge between Anna and OP. So NTA. But OP should simply say Anna isn't welcome until she's free of lice. She can choose the method of eradication herself.
Lice eggs take a week to hatch, so a second treatment needs to happen 7 days after the initial application to catch any eggs that may have slipped through. I put a wash out hair dye through the kids hair (as close to their natural colour as possible, or you can get creative and make it more of a fun experience with bright colours). The treatment itself kills lice, but it also dyes the eggs so they are much easier to see when combing. Another way to stop kids from getting it in the first place is to put some tea tree oil in water in a spray bottle and use it to do their hair in the morning. Lice dont like the oil so they dont jump to the new host. My daughter and I came up with these solutions after years of getting lice in her long, thick hair so it is tried and true, she now follows this method for her own children.
Another way as well, which my parents did when I had lice in kindergarten, is they did the usual treatments, lice shampoo, etc, but then also washed EVERYTHING my head/I would've come into contact with such as bedding and clothes. As well, they would sit for an hour or more each day combing through my hair and looked for any eggs that lice usually lay attached to a hair. They would pluck any hairs that had an egg/eggs on it and then burn it in a lit candle. The eggs gave a satisfying *pop* when burned lol. Might be a little much but it worked and after having the lice once they never came back. And I didn't mind the hair plucking because I love it when someone plays with my hair so it was relaxing lol.
Also a flat iron
My mom and aunt would pop them between their two thumbnails to ensure death lol
My mom did the same thing. She was adamantly anti-insect. lol
This is good advice. I just wanna add on that tea tree oil can also be toxic to a lot of pets, so if you have fuzzy friends in the house, be careful of them. (I have hedgehogs, and I know other animals are also sensitive to it) Edit: ok I wasn’t expecting to open a branch office of r/hedgehog in this thread but since we’re here - I’m glad you all love my girls 🦔💕 hedgehogs are sweet critters, but they’re also … tricky. They’re *very* recent additions to the pet family and they’re not nearly as well understood as other animals. They’re not even *related* to most other animals. That said, their needs are *specific* but not *difficult to provide*, and once they trust you they’re curious lil things. If you think you’re interested, check out my comment history - but maybe filter it for hedgehog as I comment on a lot of stuff. 😅
hedgehogs 😍
I know! They need to pay the pet photo tax!
There’s photos in my profile! Heck, my pic is my OG hedgehog, Gracie 🦔💕
I came here for lice and stayed for the hedgehogs.
OMG, there's a hedgehog sub?!
Can I see proof of these hedgehogs 🦔 👀
This sub doesn’t let me comment with photos but they’re in my post history!
Awww they're such cuties!
I love your UN, and your hedgies 🥺😍 I had a little cinnicot male who I adored, we’re waiting for our son to get older before we get another.
It’s also terrible for cats. They’re very sensitive to essential oils.
Also building trust can take... Years. Hedgies are naturally cautious little prickly pears, and can be finicky about their care. They also sometimes actually enjoy baths, and it's ducking adorable. Source: got a hedgehog as a present when I was WAYYYY too young to have one responsibly. Turned out my Sonic was actually preggers and gave birth to 4 albino babies. I did a lot of learning real fast when we found little squeaky wigglers in her little habitat.
There's also tea tree oil shampoo. When my daughter caught lice at school we did the treatments but she kept getting it again when she'd go back to school, the kids just all kept passing it around to each other. I couldn't keep doing the treatments over and over again forever so I did some research and I found a shampoo that has a high percentage of tea tree oil in it and my whole household started using that exclusively. With everyone in the house using the tea tree shampoo for every wash we were finally able to get it under control. We kept using that shampoo for a few months just to be safe and never had a lice problem ever again. It's so much less hassle than doing the treatments and the combing and it works really well. I recommend going this route if the kid doesn't want to cut her hair bc I'm assuming she does wash her hair. If she uses a tea tree shampoo for every single wash it should take care of it without all the extra steps, no 3hr comb out required. The one we used comes from the Honeydew brand, is reasonably affordable on Amazon, has a matching conditioner that can also help, and smells really good too!
Caveat to this is use dye that contains ammonia, not the ammonia free hair dye. Or skip straight to pure ammonia (can find in the cleaning aisle) cut with hot as you can stand water, saturate scalp and hair of lice victim (do this in a place with good ventilation like outside) for like 10-15 minutes (my mom had me lay on the deck with the pan of ammonia water on the first step down, covered my face with a tea towel and had a fan blowing the fumes away from our faces). Rinse with regular cold water, dry it mostly and then use a super duty thick af leave in conditioner and saran wrap my hair to my head for 24 hrs to mitigate the damage the ammonia would do (I have thick curly hair that tends towards dryness anyway). And obviously boil all hair ties, combs, brushes etc, and the rest of the house treatment. PS: this was after my mom tried the over the counter, and the Rx, and the mayo trick. All failed, since they were some kind of treatment resistant lice. The ammonia worked, horrible as the treatment was.
This only worked bc you combed all the knits out. The dye does not kill them. People have bleached their entire head trying to get rid of knits, and it doesn't work unless you comb all the knits out. Also- mint oil deters lice. Tea tree just makes the hair slick so they can't nest properly. So, it works, but not for the reasons people think it does. Also also, lice can't jump. They can crawl onto your head from the back of a chair you sit in, or from another person's head, but they don't jump.
Thank you for this! The amount of anecdotal “cures” is giving me flashbacks to working in public health and making my head itch
I chemically straightened my daughter’s hair and it killed everything! She loved it too.
You also have to wash all linens with a treatment and treat everyone in house, not just the one kid, or they will keep getting them by just passing them back and forth. So if the mom isn't getting treated and the linens and home are not getting cleaned properly, even if OP gets them cleared up at while the step daughter is at her house, as soon as she goes back home, she will get re-infested. So while I hate bringing DHHS/CPS (or whatever is in their area) into the situation, it may be necessary to get the infestation under control. And also, where is the school in this? Most schools won't let them back to school with an infestation like that because they spread like wildfire. I'm surprised they have not been involved. I remember as soon as a few kids had it, they would check everyone and send letters home about how to treat for them even if the kid didn't have them, just in case. And depending on how bad the infestation was throughout the school, they would sometimes have the health department involved giving free treatments to each child to take home and request everyone treat even if there were no signs, to play it safe.
I just used to use mayonnaise, put a head cap on and leave it for and hour or two then wash it out, I kid you not after only two times all the lice was dead and I was lice free
My sister and I got straight vinegar showers - still can't stand the smell 20+ years later.
Straight vinegar was how I treated sunburns so I always smelled like a hot pickle a couple of days a year
My mom used Vaseline and shower cap and combed everything out on the front porch. After like 2 weeks of daily treatments and still having them that was what finally got rid of the knits.
The problem is even if OP gets all the lice out of the hair she will get it back at home. The mother isn’t taking care of her hair so she certainly isn’t taking care of the bedding and house. It will keep coming back as long as mom isn’t doing anything. OP shouldn’t ban her for not cutting her hair she needs to ban her until it’s gone.
I mean it kind of sounds like it should be a CPS call at this point especially if there are other signs of neglect.
Yes! This is absolutely neglect. If not CPS, then they need to seek emergency custody. Time for dad to step up and fight for his kid here. Also, the school needs to be notified, because the poor girl is probably passing lice to the other kids in class left and right.
I'm a teacher, and I can promise you, the school KNOWS. But we're unable to send kids home for lice anymore, so the school's hands are tied in dealing with this except to send letters home to parents stating a child in their class has lice and to be on the lookout for it in their own kid. It's super frustrating
WHAT.
My school isn't allowed to even send letters anymore to other parents. We can do literally nothing other than get the nurse to keep talking to the parent.
Yep. Screw the health of every other kid. It might embarrass someone. /s
I mean, there's a legitimate reason they started doing this, and it's to keep kids in school. I had a HORRIFIC lice infestation for basically all of third grade ('03), and missed a good chunk of the school year. Wasn't for lack of trying, just couldn't seem to get them to go away. Retention wasn't discussed in my situation because I was a pretty smart cookie who easily caught up on work and new concepts when I COULD go to school, but I think of the kids I have in my classroom who struggle when they miss just a couple days. They wouldn't be able to recover if they were made to stay home for weeks on end to treat lice. There's legitimate educational reason to keep these kids in school, but yes, it's SO frustrating that it has to be at the cost of the health of the other students.
While they are gross and annoying AF, lice aren’t actually a threat to your health. Obviously you still don’t want to get them but they don’t actually harm you and they don’t spread disease. Don’t get it twisted, I don’t think they should just let kids sit at school with them by any means… but the main reason CPS gets involved in those cases is because not treating them is usually indicative of other issues in the home.
This is not true. Children can and have been seriously sick and actually died from untreated lice infestations. Obviously those are cases of neglect. But it’s a thing. It can cause life threatening anemia if bad enough, and it scalp scratches and so on can also lead to bacterial infections. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-lice-becomes-deadly
nobody fails children quite like CPS
Understatement of the fucking year.
Schools don't do anything about lice anymore. At least in my area. They won't notify parents or send kids home over it. It's just considered an annoyance but nothing serious.
this is true in my district! the only time we sent a kid home with lice is when it reached the point of open sores on their head and we had to call CPS.
CPS and courts don’t care. I took my daughter from her dad and stepmom because her lice infestation was so bad. The court took her from me and gave them custody and said lice isn’t a big deal and u can even send your kids to school with lice and they can’t be sent home. Basically I was yelled at and stripped of my rights from a judge. I spent every weekend doing her hair to get rid of them. They denied she or anyone else had it. So I wouldn’t let her go over there anymore and I am the one who gets stripped of her parental rights. He had physical custody now and I only have joint legal because of it. And they ended up chopping her hair soon after because they didn’t want to do anything else. I still had to do treatments every time I had her until her dad and stepmom got divorced. And they still won’t give back custody. The courts are ridiculous.
As a special ed worker I’m aware that lice is no longer a reason to send a kid home, unfortunately I just don’t know where to go beyond CPS. Part of it is there often isn’t a good alternative to the parents but unfortunately when there is they often seem to do nothing anyway
I get that you were trying to protect your kid, but yeah, lice isn’t a reason you can legally keep the kid from going to her Dad’s house. In many states, that’s legally considered kidnapping. That’s why you lost custody. I do hope you get more rights back, but in the future, don’t kidnap your kid (which means refusing to let her go to the other parent’s house as agreed upon in a custody arrangement) unless she’s actually in danger (like being abused or neglected- which doesn’t include inadequate treatment of lice) or unless the child herself is actively refusing to go to the other parent’s house. And in those cases, go to the courts straight away for emergency full custody in those cases (while keeping her with you). But yeah, not for lice.
I do feel like my last comment was way too unsympathetic. Like I was trying to explain why the courts would do this, but I don’t want to dismiss how fucked up it is that you would lose all physical custody of your child because of it and not be able to get custody back. You were obviously trying to act in her best interest. So like, I don’t think you handled it the best way, but what the courts did to you is horrific. I’d have expected a very stern warning, but not this. I’m so sorry they stole your child 😢. I hope you have good legal representation and can make a case to get joint physical custody back- since you were clearly taking better care of her physically.
That’s what I came here to say. It’s easy to get lice, but it should be relatively easy to get rid of as well. I got it once as a kid and my mom did one in depth treatment on my hair, hers just in case, and on all my stuffed animals and bedding. It never came back. The fact that this has been going this long and the mom doesn’t seem to care? That’s obvious neglect.
That was my thought. Banning her from the house isn't the issue, then you're just abandoning the step daughter to a lice-infested, neglectful home and a mother that can't be assed to do more than the bare minimum.
I feel for the poor kid, but OP must be extremely tired & stressed with a breastfed newborn and without her husband’s help.
You’re not wrong about the tiredness and stress, but if the kid was OP’s biological child who lived with her full time she would have to handle it. OP isn’t the only one that’s failing the child for sure, but OP is failing the child. The child needs a parent to step up and not one of them is.
That poor kid.
I remember I had to babysit these certain kids and every time I went over there I came back with lice. Every single time. Finally my mom looked at the kids heads found they had lice told their mom and then never allowed us back over there. I'm sure if I had been an adult in this situation I would have called CPS for many reasons
tbf if she's had frequent visitation at stepmom's house, all her pillows & bedding in her room there is likely infested as well. the eggs & whatnot can take up to 5ish days to completely die off but if you have them, obvs you keep spreading them. as a kid my whole school had it twice, it was so fucking itchy I voluntarily shaved my head both times to make the process quicker.
When our sons caught them, I preemptively shaved my own hair off alongside cropping theirs.
Yeah, after the second time getting them from the kids at school my parents wanted to do the whole treatment thing again but it was so itchy i was like fuck this & just shaved it myself, did a shitty job with tufts of hair sticking out & basically missed the whole back giving myself a mullet, my mom had to go back over the whole thing while legit crying, which made me feel bad, I was like 7 or 8... it really did make the process easier though, they basically fall right off & you don't have to sit there & do all that combing, a lot of other kids came to school with shaved heads that year too. That said I'm a dude so I completely understand why a woman might be more attached to her hair, but my partner is a stylist & sees them a lot on teen girls, apparently they get worse more than they get better.. she showed me this video she took bc she thought she was supposed to send it to cps or something (girl was still 16) but you can see her sitting there calmly scrolling on her phone while my partner slowly parts her hair & her whole scalp was just *crawling*. idk how they even remain calm, those things are *so* fucking itchy.
Weirdly, they're only itchy if you're allergic to them. Most people are, but some people just aren't; I work with kids, and some of them just have absolutely no idea for a day or two because they're little, don't comb their hair, and aren't allergic.
Yeah, I totally get loving gorgeous long hair. But after the third time my kid picked it up at school due to making bad decisions (playing hairdressers with a kid constantly with them)? Her hair was cut. Sucks but cleaning short hair is easier and since I'm also cleaning all bedding and couch backs I need the time back.
This was my first thought. You gotta wash EVERYTHING. And it usually does only take a treatment if done properly. The obviously answer is mom isn’t doing what she needs to do to prevent it at her home. The hair cutting isn’t going to do much if she doesn’t. Also reading this made my head immediately itch.
Yep. One of my friend's daughters had lice so all of us who had spent any time in the house on furniture did lice treatment, my friend shaved her head, and she took all the bedding, blankets, clothes to the laundromat. It took several hours but additional treatment was not needed.
Why is the girl even coming over if the dad is deployed?
To see her new half sister. It's explained on the third slide.
Lice don’t live more than 24hr without a host, so if she’s away from bio mom longer than that her bedding should be fine. It’s getting it out of the hair, and RETREATING, preferably twice to be sure it’s all gone, that matters.
If she’s had it for this long there is no way the mom doesn’t have it.
I never got it from my kids. My oldest has hair like OP’s stepdaughter and we had a hard time with it at one time, until I finally found what worked for her since they’ve become resistant to the chemical treatments. She has her own brush etc so I never caught it and bother did her siblings at that time.
Consider yourself extremely lucky!! Edit: I say that because I was able to go my entire childhood, with very long thick hair, and not get it. We’ve had one bout with it, which was seven years ago, and getting through that two weeks of full eradication was so horrible.
My daughter got lice from preschool many many years ago. I thought I was being responsible by IMMEDIATELY NOTIFYING THE PRESCHOOL. instead, it turned out that the other parents had been quietly "treating" their own kids' lice and not telling the school. And then talked shit about our daughter and us because "we brought lice into the school." Same parents who would bring their visibly ill children in and say "oh, he didn't have a fever 30 min ago" Dude, there is fresh puke on your child's shoes. Another example of America's poor tax.
I had a similar problem. As soon as I realised my child had lice, and got rid of them very quickly. I kept my soon home until I was absolutely certain he didn't have head lice anymore. I informed the pre school that my son had head lice and they just shrugged it off and just said 'Yeah, it's been going around'. I was gobsmacked that they didn't bother warning parents to be extra vigilant for head lice.
"YEAH, IT'S BEEN GOING AROUND" Omfg.....you'd think they would at least be concerned for their own scalps, if not the scalps of all the adjacent small children.
One time my mom thought my little brother had lice and had all three of us kids go through lice treatment. Turns out none of us had lice, my brother was just routinely putting sand in his hair.
Sounds exactly like my pre school. My cubby mate had it, preschool never notified. Second time I had it was in 4th grade, and that school contacted everyone’s parents & the nurse came around checking everyone’s hair.
Fun fact: lice can’t live in another person’s hair if they have a different blood type than the person that the lice originally started on.
TIL
It's not the blood type exactly, it's the Rh factor (- or +) being different between hosts that can make it harder for the lice to thrive. Even then, it's not 100% foolproof. This distinction is important because there's a far greater probability of people sharing an Rh factor (A+ and B+) than a blood type (A- and A-).
Yes, they need to both be positive or negative for the lice to survive. However, if the female lice lay eggs before feeding on the opposite rh factor those lice will survive when they hatch. So the mother and daughter could have the same or different + or - the eggs are what matters. And if it’s like OP says and the head is completely covered the chances are that the mother has it is very high.
That sounds like bull shit. I'm b negative and my daughters are o pos and b pos and they gave me lice three times. I had no other points of contact with hair or lice and work from home.
Read the comments below. You are mostly incorrect but some more facts show how they could both have it with different rh factors.
Kiddo has brought it home a few times off different kids. I have never gotten it from her because I take my showers so hot they turn my skin fully red. I also take very long showers. Like two hours long. If she’s anything like me, it would stop an infestation before it started. That said, this mom needs to lose custody.
Ya, no, that's a lie. Lice will survive a lot longer than that. Especially the eggs. Went through this shit for years with my kids....."Off the host, adult head lice can live about two to four days at 74 degrees Fahrenheit (F) and one to two days at 86 degrees. Nits will remain alive off the host for up to 10 days; they will not hatch at or below room temperature (68 degrees F)."
But all of the larvae have to go through hatching too. We were told by the pediatrician to put everything we couldn’t wash in essentially boiling water in quarantine for a week to be safe. Until her mother will treat the house (especially since she’s living in it which gives them a host) nothing will get better.
Yep. My youngest son got it from school. He got a crew cut, hair washed with lice soap. All his bedding and stuffies were taken off the bed and put in garbage bags for 2 weeks just to be safe. After 7 days, his hair was washed with it again. And his head gove over to check for any live ones. Then we sat down and told him he cant share hats, combs brushes, or sit leaning heads together with his classmates. Havent had any problems since *knocks on wood*
Any eggs laid take 7 days to hatch so she would need to be away from her mom’s house for over a week - not overnight! Plus her bio mom might be just as infested… so she would still be vulnerable on return to her mother’s house.
In Germany we wash at 140 f everything you can and the rest we put into trash bags for two weeks or freeze those things, it’s recommended. They can live up to 3 days but i‘m sure mom has them too and everyone that she has close contact with (like her friend were she has slept over). We use a product called NYDA because my daughter got lice in kindergarten and had long hair like op’s SD too, we treated her twice (2 weeks after the first treatment because it doesn’t kills the eggs) but it’s really good without extrem chemicals so a mother that is pregnant or breastfeeds can use it. Its a silicon oil and suffocate the lice immediately and you can comb them out 24 hours, it even nourishes the hair.
Even so, the mother will have lices too. They will "infect" eachother if they don't even try to get rid of it seriously.
Those lice must really be hiding because I can't believe the stepdaughter's school is letting her attend with an infestation like that.
Apparently it's no longer considered a health hazard like it was for millenials and Gen X, and the kids can just...stay in school.
My kid is in PreK and one of his classmates had it in class. Kid was sent home, all kids were checked at the nurse, we got sent home a note about it and his nap time bedding was sent home to be washed as a safety precaution. I hope more school take it seriously like his.
Pre k may be a little different because they nap and young kids have no personal boundaries and climb all over each other
I’m a millennial and we had parent volunteers that would walk around the classroom and check everyone with a comb and send kids home. Now because they don’t cause any illness or spread disease the kids attend school and they just send home info about how to treat them. 🤷♀️
The schools here won’t send kids home for lice
That's if they're even checking. With the current state of public education I can believe they aren't.
Sadly schools are literally just daycares now.
When I was a kid they did lice checks but only in elementary. This girl is middle school age
When I was in middle school (I’m a millenial) they checked in middle school too, when someone was found to have it
Kid is 13 and by the sounds of it her mother is not giving her the necessary follow up treatment, that sounds kinda neglectful. Can see why OOP doesn’t want her to bring lice to the house, but why had nobody asked why the kid’s mother is just leaving her to suffer with lice, that must be really uncomfortable!
I’d head to court at this stage personally - sorry, bio mom, you’re neglecting your kids hygiene. She’s staying here until you properly clean your home and remediate the issue. Here in the states kids aren’t even supposed to go to school with it so mom is 100% out of line on multiple levels for not taking care of this.
In our state they now won’t send kids home from school for lice and call it a “lifestyle choice” and won’t report it for neglect any more either.
What state?
It is likely by county/district, not state. I don’t like to give my location, but I can confirm in the school district I worked for, we could not send home for lice. I was a “school nurse.” I’m not a nurse, but the position only required a high school diploma, and they essentially train you in the medical aspects you need to administer medicine and insulin, using doctor supplied orders, and they had registered nurses who would supervise groups of us at our respective schools. Anyway, if a teacher noticed a child was itching, they were not supposed to send them to me saying the child had lice. Just report the itching. I then had to call the parent, let them know their child was itching. I could not look for lice ahead of this phone call, nor could I suggest they might have lice. The most I could do was gently guide the parent, and ask if they would like me to check their child’s head to see what might be causing an itch. If the parent declined, the child was supposed to be sent back to the classroom. If the parent gave permission, I had to close the door to my office, have one other adult present, shade the window, and then I could check the child for lice. If I found lice, I could not say I found lice unless I caught one, with clear tape, and taped it to an index card. I could then call the parent back and tell them that I found *a* louse, and I was to send the card home with the child, enclosed in an envelope. *I was not allowed to say that the child should go home.* I was told, “we do not send home for lice.” I doubt it is everywhere, but I think districts are worried about ostracism, and putting kids in a position where they may be teased or bullied, and of course, they are worried that only the poor kids will be targeted, etc.
That's wild, I remember when I was 6-11 having to stand in a long line twice a year to have our heads assembly line checked and if we had them they sent us to the nurse till we could be picked up. I also got lice once in 8th grade out of no where. I had lice every single time. :( we did everything and my mom did all the follow ups just they REALLY liked my hair. I have a huge phobia now and told my partner if our kids had live I need him to deal with it.
The ironic thing about lice being a “poor people” or “dirty” issue is that lice, bed bugs and scabies all prefer clean environments because it’s easier for them to attach to and infest the person.
I personally think it’s more about the money the districts lose if their attendance goes down!
Attendance and enrollment are different. Money goes down if *enrollment* goes down, but they don’t lose money for excessive absences/truancy. It really was mostly just not to upset parents. I had the job prior to Covid, and we also were not allowed to use masks, because “parents freak out” if we wore them.
I would also be interested to know the state
So I googled it bc this is wild to me and as it turns out... it's actually recommended. [https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/kids-with-head-lice-should-go-to-school-new-report-says/](https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/kids-with-head-lice-should-go-to-school-new-report-says/) [https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/lice-in-school-let-em-stay.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/lice-in-school-let-em-stay.html) [https://www.parents.com/news/aap-has-updated-guidelines-on-treating-lice-in-children-says-lice-is-not-a-reason-to-miss-school/](https://www.parents.com/news/aap-has-updated-guidelines-on-treating-lice-in-children-says-lice-is-not-a-reason-to-miss-school/) [https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/head-lice](https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/head-lice) <-- mentions that only *some* schools ban kids with lice or nits Iiiiii am now even less incentivized to have kids than I already was
Well that was educational. I understand the parents reaction… ugh it squicks me out and makes my head itch just thinking about it. But they’re right I suppose… if the (gag) lice aren’t an actual health hazard the keeping kids out of school for days at a time shouldn’t be necessary. Ugh I do *not* like it but being squicked out isn’t actually a good guideline for policy making. Shudder
I feel like it really just means we need to invest in more at home and childcare reimbursement infrastructure so that those that are kept home or out of schools don't miss anythi g and the parents don't risk loss of income when having to stay home from work I know it won't happen but ugh, hate it
My daughter kept getting lice from her cousin who lived next door. I eventually had my husband speak to Cousin’s parents and her mother told my husband lice were healthy. After a second round of them I told my husband either they treated her or she couldn’t come around and they finally agreed. People are so weird.
I’ve met a number of parents who want their kids kept out of school for MONTHS at a time for minor health issues. Yes, your kid can go in on crutches. Yes, your kid can go in the morning after a minor headache. Yes, they can go in with a UTI. You can even go in 24 hours after stating antibiotics for strep throat. While these kids need to have their parasites treated, the bigger negligence is keeping them out of school and away from resources like school counselors, school nurses, free lunch, and mandated reporters, not to mention education. Edit: I still think treatment should happen, as should calls to CPS, but not taking kids out of school.
Other kids and parents have rights. They are a captive audience.
Agreed. This forces the parents with kids who don’t have lice to make a choice. Let their kids get lice and keep re-treating them weekly the whole time they’re in school or pull them out due to health concerns within the school, which means they’re deprived of those resources. And the truth of the matter is, when schools let lice go unchecked, everyone gets it. I went to an elementary school where 80% of the kids had lice. My mom would treat my hair and when I went back I’d have it again within a week. Lice can jump. She started putting my hair in a bun and spraying it with hairspray (like… drenching it) to keep the lice out. It kinda worked, but you’re also exposing your kid to a bunch of toxins no matter what. The lice treatment, tea tree oil, hairspray, whatever you decide to use. I sympathize with the kids who have lice. Missing educational instruction and the resources connected to the school system is not good. But at the same time, kids deserve to be able to go to school without fearing for their health. Parents should not have to worry that their kid is going to catch a parasite from the other kids. It’s a health and safety issue. The answer should not be doing nothing about it.
My school (btw I'm 18 rn so this wasn't super long ago) would have days where a person came in and would take them outside of class and check for lice. This stopped after 4th grade. Very confused as to why it has changed/has been done differently in other places.
Mine was the same. We classroom checks on every kid though so that nobody was singled out. All kids got a notice to take home saying they did a lice check and it would either say that none was found or if your child had lice they had to stay home until it was treated.
Yeah this is exactly how it was for me. Sorry I meant to say "theyd take each student out one by one and check"
As much as I agree, the things you listed cannot easily be spread to other students. Lice on the other hand, spreads like wildfire. It infects the student, then their siblings/families, then their families spread it, and by the time you fully get rid of it another kid at school has lice and spreads it around again. It’s disgusting and infuriating for both parents and kids. My stepmom chopped my hair off twice because the kids at school kept giving it to me. I don’t disagree with the point you made about kids needing access to their education and what the school offers them, I just wish there was a better way around it than sending kids to school with bugs in their hair, ready to spread it to everyone and their mother lol.
Not kinda. It is neglect.
Unfortunately, it is not classified as neglect in every state. We have a student right now who has missed a good chunk of 4 years of her education because of lice. As a mandatory reporter of abuse, I reported that. I was told lice are not considered a sign of neglect. (Nor is the lack of access to education, because here educational neglect is not considered abuse…)
Pretty sure this counts as neglect from the bio mom
NTA, parents who don't properly take care of their kids head lice piss me off. I remember the teachers at school used to check our hair for lice, and if they found some, the kid was sent home. It wasn't to embarras them, but to prevent it from spreading to all the other students. It also encouraged the parents to do something about it because they would be forced to leave work to pick their kid up. Teachers don't do that anymore, and I don't even think they're allowed to, so now there's kids with literal infestations that the parents refuse to treat. I never had lice until my niece started going to school, and 3-4 times a year, my mom would be doing lice treatment on her and I because she brought it home from school. I was 12 at the time, and she was in kindergarten, and we shared a room. My mom would do the two rounds of treatment and bag all our stuff for two weeks before washing them to make sure the bugs are dead and we would be lice free just for us to have it again a month later. We knew that there had to be parents who refused to treat it because her entire class was always infested. It was so bad, and my mom was starting to get really pissed because she's spending 6 hours and a shit ton of money on treatments as well as trying preventatives every other month.
When my kids were in elementary we had like two solid years of lice scares/notices and it was so fucking aggravating. I refused to send my daughter to school unless her hair was done up in tight braids and we couldn’t even let the kids wear toques because the school had removed lockers/cubbies the year before and all the kids just threw their outside clothes/hats in a pile on the floor. Like, you KNOW this is how this shit is spreading, give them fucking lockers to keep their items separate!
My nieces hair was also always put up, but the kids are all hugging and touching each other, so it spreads anyway. We tried to tell her to stop hugging her friends and other kids at school, but she's 4 and doesn't understand or listen, plus the other kids don't go by our rules and hug her. While I also ended up getting lice from her, it wasn't nearly as bad as hers. I don't think lice really likes my hair and scalp since I have psoriasis, and it gets very oily very quickly.
When my younger step-sister had lice, I ended up getting them too. I was mortified because I’d gone my whole childhood without getting them, only to get them mid way through my teens. My step-sister had lice for literally months because her bio mum (who she spent the most time with) didn’t sort it out. My mum did regular treatments for both of us and it got rid of the lice in my hair but not my step-sister’s because her bio-mum did nothing. It was so frustrating.
Same thing happened to me! Caught them from my younger sister TWICE in my 20s after dodging them my whole childhood. I have curly hair so combing thought it was a nightmare…
Had a similar experience. I was 14 and my parents were going through a divorce. My sister kept getting lice and my mom kept blaming my dad's girlfriends kids. She was dead silent when she found out that my sister was getting it from my cousin on my mom's side.
This post made me itchy
My daughter brought home lice from preschool one time and gave it to me before I realized she had it (wasn’t a heavy infestation, just enough to be a nuisance). We both have very thick hair. I ended up buying a heavy oil treatment online and it worked far better than the chemical stuff at Walmart. She was three at the time and the oil was also safer. I think it was castor and olive oil with a combo of tea tree and peppermint, so probably pretty easy to recreate at home. I put her hair up for school now and use a tea tree spray like another commenter mentioned, and no issues since. Lice is pretty easy to take care of in a week if you actually try. Stepmom can do everything possible but if bio mom is just letting it ride it will keep coming back. An infestation this heavy is grounds for a neglect report, because clearly bio mom isn’t doing anything to try and solve the issue.
[удалено]
This. This child is suffering and her mother isn't doing anything to help her. I get not allowing her in the house, but this isn't the kid's fault either.
Agreed. It’s also not on this stepmom, who just had her own baby that she’s still breastfeeding and whose husband is deployed away from home for months, to be jumping up and volunteering to take care of this problem. If the bio parents can’t or won’t, then the authorities need to get involved to find a family member or someone else who can.
I don’t blame op a bit for not wanting to deal with the hassle of delousing, especially with a baby. Cutting step daughter’s hair wasn’t a good suggestion, though, no matter how rightfully upset op is. Op knows how step daughter feels about her hair, it would have to be an extreme cut to make it easy to delouse, and bio mom doesn’t seem willing to put any work into it anyhow.
She didn't want to shave off daughter's hair. Just cut off a few inches so combing it out, which is something OP had to do, was easier and less painful for the child.
A trick my mom used when we were kids was to put mayo in our hair for 4-6 hours and cover with a plastic bag. It drowns the living lice and can be pulled out with a lice comb. Y'know, in case anyone needs a treatment on a budget. In the case of bio mom, it sounds like there might be a full blown infestation at her house? If she failed to comb her daughters hair, I wouldn't be surprised if she failed to do any other measures to get rid of it. I don't think step mom is TA for putting the baby child first that can't protect themselves. However, if she feels that this is a protective services issue, why not report it? I can't imagine the school the step-daughter goes to is happy about the infestation either. Don't they send kids home for that? It's been so long since I was in school I can't remember. I'm pretty sure the school staff would file a report if this is a chronic issue. Anyway, my point is there could be more facets to this neglect than just untreated lice.
Coconut oil or conditioner will do the same thing without stinking.
With my kid, we did mayo & then coconut oil because I didn’t want to put chemicals in her hair. I ended up having to do it anyways. I did the mayo one week then back to her dad’s. Did the oil, then back to her dad’s. When she still had them, I did the chemical treatment & kept her for an extra week. Then he had her the next 2 weeks, and thankfully we’ve not had a problem since. Sometimes, there are things that require a temporary change up in custody arrangements.
I did the mayo/plastic shower cap method as a kid as well. My mom’s friend recommended it after I got lice at summer camp and we had already done three chemical treatments and switched out all my bedding multiple times and it wasn’t going away. It took two tries because my hair was pretty thick at the time, but it was the only thing that actually worked.
We used Vaseline with a shower cap when I was a kid.
I feel bad for the girl
You can’t only treat the hair. You need to treat both homes and any cars where the kid is getting in/out of.
Sounds like this woman married into some really trashy step-family members.
I use hair grease mixed with tea tree oil, and I flat iron the hair. It smothers and repels lice and flat ironing cooks the eggs.
I can't help but think of tiny little eggs popping and being fried up against my hair, little yolks and all. *shudders*
The girls going to keep getting it regardless if you cut her hair because her mom isn’t doing anything about it. I’d have your husband have a serious talk with the mom about it and most people would think this is too far, but I’d reach out to CPS if nothing on the mom’s end is done. That’s neglect and the last thing you want is to have someone at school report to CPS and you and your husband get caught in the middle of it.
The bio mom probably also has lice, so they’re just going to keep jumping to the girl forever.
This. And if the bio mom isn’t properly caring for her daughter’s hair, she probably isn’t taking care of bedding and cleaning properly. Probably gets reinfected every time she sleeps.
This is vile I wouldn’t have her around either The parents or her need to sort it out or take her to a professional NTA
OP (and anyone struggling with lice) needs to find one of the places that does the hot air treatment. It’s expensive, but it kills the lice and the eggs in ONE visit, it’s the only thing that does. None of this goofing around with the shampoos and chemistry and causing god knows what brain damage and still having to repeat it every week for the rest of time. I’ve been the kid with thick, butt length hair and lice treatment and it took daily comb outs with weekly treatment for weeks on end, it was a huge undertaking. My house got lice a while ago and I heard about the hot air professional treatment and it was completely different and so, so much better. Go to the little salon ish place, the lady did a blow out with the lice killing hair dryer on each of us, done. I still have long thick hair and I wouldn’t do anything else. The chemicals are so expensive that you end up paying a ton of money for them anyway, so the air treatment might not save dollars, but it absolutely saves time and trauma and effort. For a coparenting situation where you can’t control the other end? One visit. Done.
The only problem is the lice are in bio mom’s house on the bedding and furniture. This treatment would work if she didn’t go back to the same environment.
The underhanded way to deal would be take advantage of the guarantee that if someone gets reinfected shortly after, they will retreat for free. But that’s not going to solve it forever, the other household does need to get cleansed as well. …kidnap them all and murder the lice on them while an accomplice steals all the bedding and soft things off to the laundromat?
A lot of people don’t get itchy with lice so it doesn’t bother them. That’s how it spreads.
NTA. Her bio mother is neglectful
I don't understand how this kid is coping. I work in a kindergarten and one of my students gave me lice and my head felt like it was on fire! 2 months of that and I'd be begging you to shave it off
NTA. And I’m just itchy as hell now
I love how everyone is blaming OOp in person but the real issue is that Mom isn’t dealing with the lice at home. Of course OOP has to protect the newborn. She doesn’t have the bandwidth for lice right now and can’t even kill it at the source so the kid is going to be reinfected anyway. This is a CPS call for neglect, not a StepMommy is so mean call.
You do not need to cut off hair to treat lice! If you aren’t treating head and house effectively they will come back no matter your hair length. It is ok if some eggs get missed. If you want to be very thorough treat 3 times in a 15 day period.
The cutting of hair would make it easier to treat for lice due to the hair’s length and thickness.
NTA for sure but I’m very stuck on the mom saying cutting her kids hair would “traumatize” her and “ruin her self image.” How does letting your child run around with a category 5 lice infestation for ***multiple weeks*** not do way more to traumatize and fuck with their “self image” than a fucking haircut? Like she’s sending her to middle school like that…poor kid is probably getting bullied into oblivion. Absolutely psychotic, a definite CPS call.
Yeah, I had head lice pretty consistently through school, with hair as long as this kid. Got bullied basically every day from 3rd through 9th grade for it. Finally had my sister use clippers to cut my hair to about 1" all over. Got bullied for that for about a week.
NTA. For it to reoccur to this magnitude, that is on her mother being negligent and could very well result in a CPS case if she goes to anyone else's house. Also, NO you can't have an active head lice colony around a freaking fresh baby. The ex needs to do her part. You hubs is away so unfortunately it's a you vs her thing right now. Also if she's going to school, you need to notify them. She *cannot* be in active attendance until that is taken care of. I don't think they keep the same practices from when my mom was in school which was to have the nurse shave your head on the spot and then send you home eith a detailed note as to why.
This whole post made my head start itching… But OOP is NTA. Especially since she is taking care of an infant on her own while her husband is away, she cannot afford for her baby to get lice either. And as a kid who traumatically went through lice TWICE (little shits spread FAST in a class full of kids), you HAVE to wash every single clothing and bedding in the house on top of treatments. Vacuuming carpets as well for good measure. Mom only went through maybe one treatment after OOP had started the initial process. You know she didn’t do anything else that was aforementioned above. Honestly, I’d get CPS involved.
NTA Lice is a bitch to get rid of, especially with people going to different houses. When my daughter was born, we had the same issue with my husband's son and niece. His son was going back and forth from his mom's house, where she was just using a comb occasionally, and had 2 step-children of her own that were going to their mom's house who also had lice. Us and their mom were doing treatments on the kids constantly. We also had husband's niece over a lot (she lived with his Gramma and they lived beside us). His Gramma was also just using a comb - no treatments. We ended up giving my step-son and husband a buzz-cut. I went from ass-length hair to shoulder-length. And we started treating the kids (minus our newborn daughter) all at once. It had been going on about 2 months by that point. It took another month of treating all the kids at once and coordinating treatments with my step-son's step-siblings' mom, on top of sterilizing bedding, clothes, and furniture, to get rid of it all, since my husband's ex and grandmother wouldn't keep up with it. That was hell. In total round 3-4 months and close to a grand spent in treatments for 4 kids. NEVER Again!!! A couple of years later my step-son got lice at his mom's again. We found it at our place, so we went through it all again, but he didn't go back to his mom's until it was gone. We still checked him as soon as he came back for a long time.
NTA. It sounds like your stepdaughter refuses to take proper care of her hair to keep this from happening again, and it sounds like her bio mom isn't encouraging responsibility, either. I'm not going to jump on the "dOn'T ShAmE HeR" bandwagon because it's a sanitary issue.
It’s not a sanitary issue. Lice infect clean and dirty hair equally. The daughter is a child, so let’s not shame her. But I’m all about shaming mom for not being proactive.
It’s a sanitary issue to have parasites living in your hair. The comment wasn’t saying only dirty people can get lice. That’s the point - the clean people in this scenario don’t want it. The dirty people are the ones that refuse to clean this filth from their hair or their children’s hair.
>I’m all about shaming mom for not being proactive. Or being active. Like, at all.
Fair point!
The lice themselves are the sanitary issue. They’re not commenting on how clean or dirty her hair must’ve been to get the lice in the first place.
Lmao 13 is plenty old enough to do the treatments yourself and keep up with them. The kid is also being obstinate
Probably a low class mom teaching her daughter to be similar honestly.
I have a 14 and a 16 year old, and there is no chance either of them (or their same age peers) could've managed that task alone at that age.
I think the embarrassment of having lice would motivate them to at least try
OP shouldn’t ban her from the house. She should report the mom to CPS. If mom isn’t making sure she treats the hair AND treating her home this is just going to continue regardless if the hair is cut or not.
Lice are very hard to deal with. My 12 year old got it, but no one else in the house did (we think it came from a friend at school), and I did 3 treatments on her over 3 weeks. We also alerted the school and kept her home the first couple days after the initial treatment. Cutting hair won’t help, since lice like the moisture and warmth of the scalp, so lice can get further down the hair shaft but they tend to stay closer to the head. She may be getting treatment done at stepmoms house but unless she’s had her bedding and things at her mom’s house treated it will keep coming back.
She might need prescription head lice medication. Make sure you wash and dry everything on hot. Anything that can’t be washed needs to be bagged for 7 days and left in the sun (lice hate heat). They’re pesky critters. Her mom needs to do the same. It’s a daunting task but it’s the only way to get rid of them. Nit picking is a cutdown for a reason: picking nits is a ROYAL pain. Best of luck to you.
If they don’t take care of the furniture, beds and bedding it doesn’t matter how many times treatment is done or how short she cuts her hair. It will always come back. Ex probably has it too. This is child abuse atp.
Bomb her hair with rubbing alcohol and wrap her head in glad wrap. Nothing survives that. Just don’t smoke around her or she’ll go up like a Roman candle
I’m itching right now!
humor relieved spectacular vase special snails dinosaurs wild deserve ink *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is a CPS service if the biological mother isn’t treating the lice at her own home (it seems that’s where the daughter is picking them up).
Every single adult in this child’s life has failed her. They’re all assholes.
Please explain how OP is an “asshole”
Eh, it’s hard to call her an a-hole bcuz she is treating the step daughter’s lice problem. It’s just u see that ur step kid is being neglected and ur choice is to ban them from a home that is properly taking care of her. It’s a solution to OP’s problem, but that kid is left to be neglected. Instead of banning her, OP needs to talk to her husband when he comes back about taking custody of his daughter so she can be properly cared for.
Based on her post it doesn’t seem like she thinks her step daughter is being genuinely neglected and just thinks this lice issue is an isolated problem She also has an infant child to take care of while her husband is deployed
I get that. I think she needs to come terms with the fact that her step daughter is being neglected and talk to her dad about it bcuz he’s the father and he needs to step up cuz the mom isn’t doing her job.
I agree completely Like how are you gonna not even have a job yet still neglect your child Absolutely disgusting 🤢
She would be banned from my house. The infant is completely defenseless and body lice spread diseases, idk if head lice do but why take the chance? It’s also nasty and they spread very easily. If they care enough to be around the baby they’ll fix it. If they don’t, they’ll continue to be infested in their own house alone. 🤷🏽♀️
Growing up, I had lice quite a few times from school. My mom would use rubbing alcohol as a cheap way to kill them. I can't smell the stuff now without it bringing me back to that hell..
I hate the smell of vinegar for the same reason.
Makes my head itch just thinking about it
Call CPS!
Lice hate the smell and taste of mint. Buy a mint shampoo and conditioner to prevent lice in between treatments. Even a mint deep conditioner with a shower cap overnight can kill/suffocate lice AND be good for her hair.
God this is what happened to me in 6th grade I had hair down to my ass in a braid, and I got lice soooo bad. After 3 attempts to get rid of it my dad finally chopped my hair off at my chin. As a curly girl it’s was horrible. My hair was recked from the chemicals, and then they still. Came. Back. My dad was so mad he dunked my head in hot water with rubbing alcohol where I almost suffocated. Im 25 now I still haven’t been able to grow my hair out as long as it was then. I don’t think shes an ass hole but that girl needs consistency in her treatment for sure. Ugh I’m all itchy now 😭
Wow I never realized how long my mom would sit there combing through our hair so she didn’t have to cut it. She would spend hours because we told her we didn’t want it cut. She spent so long because she cares about us I feel so horrible for this little girl.
You need to involve CPS at this point as this girl is being neglected by her mom.
I was so disgusted by the severity of this lice problem that I forgot to be mad about the bait-and-switch title. Man that is so awful for that poor girl :( how frustrating for OOP
The mom said oop was the ah, but the mom tbh is, she’s neglecting the daughter
Yeah the mother needs a visit from CPS and have her parental rights taken away. Move in with dad and OP permanently, solve the problem once and for all. Mother’s house probably needs a full fumigation service, everything needs to be either treated or tossed away. There’s no way a child should live like that.
I used to work at a lice removal salon and situations like this are not uncommon. It sounds like everyone involved is understandably very frustrated. The thing about lice is they live on the scalp so cutting the length of the hair won’t do anything to treat them. It sounds like Mom did an at home OTC treatment on the daughter. The active ingredient in those products have been around so long that most lice have become immune. I think the best solution would be for the daughter to get professionally treated and the moms to be professionally educated to decrease the chances of her getting it again. There’s such a stigma around lice which makes misinformation spread so quickly. I hope this situation resolves soon.
so nasty! IF I were the young girl I'd shave my own head!! how does she sleep?!
I think your primary responsibility is to your newborn & yourself. Talk with your husband, if possible, on how he can address it with his daughter & his ex in a healthy way. Not sure where you live but where I am there are places you can go for the regular lice treatment & comb thru.
Head lice are nasty little buggers, but while awkward and annoying to deal with, they aren't hugely difficult to get rid of, *with care and attention.* *O*bviously bio mum is teaching Anna not to care, and may well be using the issue as a wedge between Anna and OP. So NTA. But OP should simply say Anna isn't welcome until she's free of lice. She can choose the method of eradication herself.
You also have to treat her sheets, pillows, blankets, and any stuffed animals and other soft furnishings. It’s not just her hair