Lice Prevention 101

On the 4th day of school I got the dreaded lice note sent home with one of my kids.

Dear Parents, there is a case of lice in your child's classroom. Blah, blah, blah, a two page letter with instructions and information. There are never details in these letters except that there is lice. It is the same form letter the school sends every time there is lice going around.

Did I panic? Did my head instantly itch? Did I furiously check my child?

YES

Have you heard of Super Lice? That is enough reason to panic.

Instead of waiting until you need to deal with treatment of hard to get rid of parasites living on your child's head and all the cleaning that is involved why not just prevent lice to begin with?

The first step is to make sure your children know the rules:

• No head to head contact with other children
• No sharing combs, brushes, coats, hats, and sweatshirts
• No lying on the floor/carpet in classrooms
• At sleepovers bring your own bedding and leave a fair amount of space between yourself and friends bedding. NO SLEEPING TOGETHER on the same bed/pillow

Then there are things you can do to help prevent your child from getting lice:

• Before school spray children's hair with Lice Prevention Spray (recipe to follow) and put girls hair in a tight ponytail and spray with a lot of hairspray.
• Whenever your child bathes wash your child's hair with shampoo that has added Melaleuca Oil (also known as tea tree oil). Add 5 drops to single use of shampoo, or make your own Lice Prevention Shampoo (recipe to follow)

When making the following recipes, be sure to use 100% Pure Essential Oils and that they are steam distilled or cold pressed for the extraction process. Also make sure they come from a botanical plant source and don't contain synthetics or impurities. I get mine from Melaleuca Inc, 

There are many other companies that provide good quality essential oils such as Young Living and DoTerra. I get the Andiroba Oil from Amazon. Any coconut oil may be used.

By using these prevention methods, I have avoided 5 children from getting lice for the past 13 years, and in turn avoided all the work involved in getting rid of those pesky parasites.

 Good luck preventing these critters from living on your child's head!