If a child has lice: what is important to know and how to properly treat

Compared to adults, children are much more likely to get head lice. Usually, lice appear in a child after the start of a new school year at school or in kindergarten - after a vacation in the countryside. At the same time, it is almost impossible to detect infection in the early stages - only a few parasites on the head are usually not felt, and you usually have to think about how to treat a child already a few weeks after infection.

It is useful for each parent to know the basic approaches and nuances about the treatment of a child from lice, so that when parasites are detected, they can take the necessary and targeted actions in time and quickly, thereby saving their children from severe forms of pediculosis.

 

Ways to infect children with lice

There are two main ways of transmitting lice from sick people to children:

• direct bodily contact during joint games, fights, sleep, just communication
• as well as the use of other people's hair care products. Parasites may well remain on combs, hairpins and elastic bands, which will easily crawl onto the hair of a healthy child.

Few people know, but lice can also be transmitted through water in bathtubs, pools and open water bodies - they keep well enough on the water and do not die in this condition for several days. However, cases of such infestation with lice are extremely rare today.

On a note

There is a pronounced seasonality in infecting children with lice: most often they are transmitted in winter, when children spend a lot of time indoors in close groups, as well as in early autumn, when children return to educational groups after summer holidays. It is in the middle of autumn and by the New Year holidays that one should usually check the condition of the child’s hair as carefully as possible and, if lice or nits are found, start adequate treatment as soon as possible.

 

How to identify lice in a child?

It is not difficult to determine that a child has lice. For this it is enough:

• Carefully observe the child: if he constantly scratches his head and tries to style his hair, it is most likely lice (you need to visually verify this).
• Check the condition of the hair: lice in children on the head are noticeable on their own, sitting on the hair, and also give themselves away by the presence of nits on the hair - whitish eggs attached to the hair with a sticky secret. If they are found, treatment should begin immediately.
• Even if there were no lice on the hair, it is worth checking the child’s bed and the linen that he wears most often - the linen louse lives here.
• The main consequences of lice in children are the lice bites themselves and the appearance of an allergy to these bites. It is the numerous red itchy dots on the head that are a reliable sign of infection in the child.

At the same time, it is the presence of nits in children that means that the parasites in the child’s hair (and sometimes on the eyebrows and eyelashes) are exactly lice.An inexperienced eye can confuse them with bedbug larvae (more mobile than lice), fleas (darker and bouncy), and even ticks. But only lice place their eggs on the hair, and the treatment of the child in this case should be carried out precisely from these bloodsuckers.

And further: Just don't burn your hair - vinegar is really effective against lice and nits (the article has over 100 comments)

On a note

Describing the treatment of lice in children, the well-known pediatrician Komarovsky advises to shine a table lamp on the head to identify the lice themselves - in this case, the lice shine and become more noticeable.

 

How dangerous can lice be?

Lice in children are the most dangerous because they cause a whole range of unpleasant symptoms that disrupt the child's behavior, his sleep and, in general, normal life.

Lice are harmful primarily by itching, skin irritation at the sites of bites and the appearance of pustular inflammation where the bites are combed with fingers and infections are introduced into the wounds.

Deeper manifestations of pediculosis are a rash, the appearance of small blue spots on the skin, signs of allergies. With the development of the disease, the skin may become rougher, boils and ulcers appear.

Clothes (linen) louse, biting the child mainly on the body, sometimes carries pathogens of typhus and relapsing fever - deadly diseases. The same infections can infect a child and a head louse, but much less frequently.

 

How to treat a child for lice?

Treating a child for lice is generally easy.Even if the situation is running and there are serious rashes and wounds from scratched bites on the head or body, first of all it is necessary to get rid of the parasites themselves, and then proceed to symptomatic therapy.

To get rid of head lice, quite numerous, affordable and diverse insecticidal shampoos are often used today. Medifox flea shampoo is very popular among them.

With shampoo, the head and body are lathered and aged for an hour or two. It is advisable to wear a rubber cap or a plastic bag on your head to enhance the effect.

Review:

“Nightmare, the whole Internet has climbed, on every forum it is written that the treatment of lice in children should be done with kerosene. It's the old fashioned way! It's like getting rid of them with conspiracies. I buy Nittifor or Medifox, after one washing of the head, this muck does not happen to a child for a year. My little one regularly brings lice from the youth expeditions, so we poison them even before they multiply in large numbers.

Galina, Ostrovskoe

Body lice on clothes can be destroyed by boiling things or soaking them and treating them with the same shampoos.

And further: Killer remedy for lice and nits for 40 rubles - hellebore water (the article has more than 60 comments)

Sometimes after a week or two, the treatment of lice should be repeated, since some shampoos do not kill nits, and new parasites have time to hatch from the eggs on an already clean head in a week.

On a note

Strictly speaking, it is not entirely correct to say "treatment of lice in children" or "how to cure lice in children." Lice is not a disease, the disease is called lice.Treating lice that need to be destroyed is completely impractical. Therefore, you need to say either “remove lice in children”, or “treatment of pediculosis”.

After the lice are destroyed, children should be treated. If the whole team or several children in the family are infected, the procedures should be carried out simultaneously:

• Fresh and itchy bites are smeared with a Vietnamese asterisk or Rescuer cream.
• To relieve an allergic reaction, you can use antihistamines. This should be done only on the recommendation of a doctor, since such drugs have their own contraindications.
• Wounds, inflammations and ulcers at the sites of bites should be treated with disinfectants and cauterizing agents such as brilliant green or iodine solution. In case of serious injuries, it is necessary to bandage them with wound healing agents.

The bluish spots that appear at the bite sites will pass on their own over time, but to speed up their disappearance, vitamin preparations containing B vitamins and vitamin E should be used.

Review

“Maximka brought us lice from the camp. Everything is like in the textbook - itching, nits, lice on the pillow. Grandmother was shouting something about kerosene, which needs to treat lice in children, but we quickly calmed her down, bought a NOC and washed their hair for a week instead of shampoo, keeping the kid with a soapy head for a long time. Lice literally poured into the bath! I had to smear the bites with brilliant green, because there were too many of them. But we did it, after two weeks there was not a single parasite.”

Stanislav, Omsk

Special lice combs are very good for getting rid of parasites. They allow you to remove lice mechanically, without the use of insecticidal shampoos.

However, the complete disposal of lice with the help of these products will take at least 3-4 days and will require a serious investment of time for diligent and scrupulous combing. In this case, there is always a risk that the nits will not be completely removed.

 

Modern drugs and some folk remedies for getting rid of lice

In order to get rid of lice as reliably as possible and after it children could be treated immediately, you should choose reliable shampoos containing proven insecticidal preparations. The most famous anti-lice poison is Permethrin - if it does not get into the mouth and eyes, then it does not cause any trouble to the child himself.

Based on Permethrin, several shampoos are produced:

• Medifox - the most famous and popular shampoo
• NOC is a close analogue of Medifox
• Bubil
• Lauri, which also works well against body lice.

Additionally, you can use Pedilin, Parazidoz, Itaz, but the effect of their use is often not as pronounced as the use of Medifox and NOC.

The people continue to fight lice in the old fashioned way with the help of kerosene, vinegar and turpentine. These products also kill lice, but they are more difficult and unpleasant to use than shampoos. Sometimes decoctions of herbs are also used, but their effect on lice is often quite weak.

In any case, after dressing the lice, it is desirable to cut the child as short as possible, and ideally shave it bald.

In this case, the lice themselves will not be able to live on the head, and the skin will recover faster from bites and allergies.

 

What you need to know to successfully remove lice from a child

 

How to comb out lice and nits from a child with a special comb

 

What to do if your child has lice or scabies: tips for parents