First, before we dive into this infested topic, brace yourself. The more you know about the wonders of head lice, the more likely you are to spend the next two weeks scratching your head from time to time and shuddering. Thinking about lice too much provokes a case of “the heebie-jeebies.”

Second, try to channel a bit of helpful fatalism. People don’t die from head lice. Sure, if you find a louse crawling on your teeny child’s scalp, you might end up flapping your hands and running around in circles while emitting an airless eeh-eeh-eeh scream. But unless you trip, fall and impale yourself on one of Urban Outfitters’ invisible toy sticks, no one’s going to get hurt. Or sick. Maybe nauseated. But not sick.

Even when it comes to changing your life to avoid head lice, it’s important to maintain perspective. What you realize is that reasonable precautions are important. But staying happy, and productive and (frankly) sane means that you’ve just got to shrug and, after taking reasonable precautions, think that hey, what will be will be. Every living creature on this earth has its own version of lice (aphids are plant lice). But I’ve seen friendships and social events and classrooms literally destroyed by the emotional fallout of a head lice outbreak. Which makes you wonder if, really, should we let the little suckers have that much power over us? Instead, we can focus that energy into anti-louse action.

The first way to prevent head lice is to arm yourself with some knowledge. Here are a few important head lice facts to keep in mind:

1) People are infested, on average, four to six WEEKS before they discover they’ve got lice. That means it can be essentially impossible to know who got what, when, from whom. The blame game, in a world of lice, is meaningless. Take it out on the lice – those little creepers are sneaky beyond belief. How sneaky?

2) Lice, except in florid cases, can be harder to diagnose than you might think. Hey, theoretically, all you need for a self-sustaining infestation is one fertilized female louse. They’re tiny. And sometimes speedy (6-32 cm/min). On-going cases exist with as few as 10-15 live lice on a person’s entire head (average = 12).

3) Nit cases are how most diagnoses are made. The louse glues an egg to the base of a hair shaft and the heat of a person’s body incubates the egg. Lice (being nobody’s fool) lay eggs that are, generally, the color of the person’s hair. Only when the egg has hatched, and the hair has grown out, and the “husk” that’s still glued to the hair-shaft pales, can you reliably see the empty cases. But even that is sometimes difficult to be sure about. Telling the difference between normal scalp fluff or skin, and an old nit case, is a job for someone with experience.

4) Shampoo and conditioner won’t help. Keep in mind, getting head lice has nothing to do with hygiene. Trust me, lice don’t actually care how often you wash your hair. They like a nice invigorating shower as much as the next person. You get lice when lice from one head move to another head. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. Lice has nothing to do with poverty either – they don’t know how much is in your bank account. Lice can be more common when people are living in crowded settings, though, purely because the lice can more easily spread to more heads. Our only saving grace is that they can’t live very long on another surface (max = hours, but not more than 2 days). Lice have to feed (urk – your blood) frequently. Five times a day. And lice can’t jump. They’re not fleas. High heat works to kill them, but we’re talking clothes dryers here. If you try to treat lice by blow-drying high heat on someone’s head, you can burn and/or kill the child (true – there are reported cases where treatment solutions on a head ignite), but the lice are fine – they just move to the other side of the head.

5) Are they dead yet? When it comes to lice treatment the question is (as people in the Oval Office have been known to ask), exactly how do you know when the war is won? From the situation room, here’s the scene, based on what we now know: So we’ve got a very few stealth lice, nearly invisible, dodging and zipping around hair shafts like a SWAT team. But from our command central post, our most reliable visual clue that lice-invaders are still in forbidden territory is a dead husk (or three) from 6 weeks ago (which may, *cough*, be lint). AND you’ve got, among the civilians, a school-wide epidemic of the willies (aka lice PTSD). Every single person is scratching and shuddering constantly. How are you ever going to be able to tell if increasingly toxic and desperate measures have cured…anything?

All of which is to re-enforce the need, when it comes to lice, for calm. And some perspective. Especially when the urge becomes almost overwhelming to either a) grab a pitchfork, some torches and mob up, in order to go after that family you know is to blame, or b) cancel all human activity and eliminate all possible human contact – just to protect your loved ones from this scourge.

Instead, here are some practical, sensible approaches to help you and yours avoid head lice.

6) Use the star pattern for sleeping arrangements at sleepovers. First, make it a habit, if it’s not already, to have sleeping bags and sleeping-on-the-floor an expected part of sleepovers. No sharing pillows or beds. Second, when night-time comes, instead of putting kids side by side, or lying in a circle with their heads in the middle, try to get kids to lie in a circle with their feet in the middle. A good PR move for encouraging this arrangement is to tell kids that this way everyone gets enough room, and no one is left sleeping on the ends.

7) Beware performance culture! Adults who wouldn’t dream of letting their kids share a comb or a hat seem to forget all precautions when it’s time for a performance. Schools with strict lice policies will hang posters for a production of “Annie!” where 37 kids in two casts swap 6 wigs between 5 scenes. Make-up and hair volunteers will style all kids with the same implements, hair-bands, and hair-ties. And the hats! Don’t get me started on the hats! Make sure your kid’s joy of performing isn’t marred by a 4-6 week delayed mega-infestation. It’s important to have performance programs develop sensible anti-lice precautions. Cosmetic grade disinfectant should be mandatory for hair styling. If that’s not possible, at a minimum, each kid should have their own brush/comb with strict non-sharing supervision. Keep in mind that lice tend to be dead if left on a surface for more than a couple of days, so those elaborate hats for “Dolly” can probably still be used between separate casts, as long as they perform on different days.

Safety (equipment) first! Let’s take a moment here and play the Worst Case Scenario Game-show! Which of the following would you choose? What’s behind Door #1 – Skull fracture and death; or Door #2 – Head trauma with a lifelong seizure disorder; OR Door #3 – Itching. Not really much of a comparison, is it? That’s why, when it come to your kid’s long-term health, helmets trump head lice fears any day of the week. Sure, in terms of avoiding head lice, it’s best if everyone has their own, individual head-protection. But if your nine year old son is at a friend’s house and they’ve decided to take on Dead Man’s Cliff with a borrowed skateboard, you want to make sure he knows it’s better to borrow the helmet too – rather than avoid head protection because of lice fears. It gets a bit trickier when expensive protective head gear is shared constantly on a team, and passed among players during the same event/day/tournament. While the practice may not be optimal for lice avoidance, it’s definitely better than having someone forced to take what’s behind Door #1.

10) What’s the deal with movie seats and airline headrests? Once you’re aware of head lice transmission patterns and risks, you’ll probably start to wonder about those cushy movie theater seats. You know, the kind where hundreds of people lean their head back against them, over and over again all day. Can you get head lice from leaning your head back against them? The same question applies to airplane seats. Planes are emptied and refilled rapidly, with only cursory trash removal. Many airlines no longer use (or change!) those flimsy paper headrest covers – and who knows if those even “worked” in the first place? And, since most people can’t know they’ve got a case of head lice until 4-6 weeks after exposure, how would you know one of those seats is where you got it? Unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive answer for you there. What’s reassuring is that most clusters of head lice occur in the same predictable ways – among elementary to middle school kids and their siblings/family members. But if you’re worried, you can do like a nurse friend of mine does – carry a scarf to toss over the seat back, then shove it in a plastic bag afterward to launder and dry on high heat. Does that work? Reasonably, it could, but sorry, again, I don’t have a definitive answer for you there.

Bottom line: We humans are uniquely prone to infestations. Hey, it may be the real reason we’re, as a species, essentially hairless. Which leads me to wonder if the only difference between us and chimps, over time, is that we ARE hairless. After all, if you have to spend all day, every day, picking nits, it’s hard to find time to paint the Mona Lisa. When it comes to recognizing, treating, and containing the spread of lice, we’re all in this together. After all, anyone can have a lousy day.

• Avoid head to head contact at school and home.
• Do not share clothing, hats, scarves, sports uniforms and helmets, coats and hair accessories
• Do not share combs and brushes or towels
• Do not lie in beds, on couches or car seats that have recently been in contact with an infested person
Lice are usually spread thru head to head contact and less frequently by lice that crawl.
Preschool and elementary-age children, 3-11, and their families are infested most often. Girls get head lice more often than boys. In the United States, African-Americans rarely get head lice. Personal hygiene or cleanliness in the home or school has nothing to do with getting head lice.

TO PREVENT RE-INFESTATION
• Do not worry about furniture sprays, they are useless. Vacuuming the areas such as floors, carpets, bedrooms, and couches is sufficient. Don’t forget to vacuum car seats!
• Wash the bedding each morning in hot water. Dry on high heat for at least 20 minutes.
• Store all stuffed animals, large comforters, etc. in a sealed plastic bag for 2 weeks.
• Soak combs and brushes in Lysol or rubbing alcohol for at least 1 hour.

It’s that time of year…. head lice is going around your child’s school and you start to panic. Not to worry… there is an all natural and organic product line for children called Fairy Tales. Your child can either use daily to prevent head lice or to treat it.

Fairy Tales Hair Care was created over 20 years ago in the Fairy Tales Salon in Hewlett, NY. The product line was launched nationally in 1999. Within one week, Rosie O’ Donnell was showing off a bottle of Rosemary Repel Shampoo on her talk show. Parents love these natural products with organic herbs to cleanse, condition and most importantly, repel hair lice.

The Rosemary Repel line is infused with organic herbs of rosemary, citronella, lavender, and tea tree oil – all fragrances which have been shown to help repel lice. A study done in the Israeli Medical Journal showed that citronella was the most effective herb. The products were independently tested and proven to be nearly 100% effective when used together. The Lice Good-Bye product uses all natural yeast enzymes to dissolve nit “glue” and break down the skeletal system of a louse and nit (egg) – a much more effective treatment than products such as Rid or Nix. All of the Fairy Tales products are paraben and sodium laureth sulfate free and use the finest ingredients such as Vitamins A, B and E and passion flower, aloe, jojoba, rose hips, sage, cherry bark and chamomile.

 Cow Licks Kids Salon carries the entire line of Rosemary Repel products from Fairy Tales.  Stop in today and let our experts help you select the necessary products to keep your family lice free.

Using Kool Aid as a hair dye is a fad currently sweeping across Boca, leaving in its wake countless parents wondering if there is a way to “undo the do!” Unfortunately, it may not be easy. There are several home remedy suggestions with various degrees of success depending on your child’s hair color, and how much Kool Aid was used. Here are some of the more common suggestions that are out there. But keep in mind, none of these are guaranteed. We can’t even guarantee we can get it out in the salon.

Toothpaste is among the more popular (and more safe) suggestions. Try rubbing the toothpaste along the hair that was dyed, then rinse it out. Another suggestion is to use undiluted Prell shampoo on dry hair. Let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse out.  I’ve also heard of people making a thick paste out of crushed vitamin C tablets and water and letting it sit for about an hour before rinsing out.  You can always try using a commercial hair dye remover, but be careful. While some products will return hair to its original color, others are designed to remove ALL color from the hair.

So far, no one in my house has come home with Kool Aid hair yet, so I can’t personally say I’ve tried any of these. And my lawyer wants me to make sure everyone knows that Cow Licks doesn’t suggest or endorse any of these methods.  But with more and more Boca kids going “multi-colored,” I wanted to pass along some ideas.