We send the children off to school in jackets because it is chilly in the morning when the get on the bus. Towards afternoon, the weather begins to warm up. The Children are likely to toss off their jackets into a pile on the ground. At the end of recess, they will probably retrieve them. If just one of the children who tossed a jacket into that pile happened to have head lice then the lice probably jumped onto all of the other jackets. This pile of cloth is the perfect playground for those little biting opportunists to spread. The children will probably slip their jackets on to get onto the bus. That is all it takes for the lice to migrate onto your children’s heads. If you have other children in your home, it won’t take long to spread to all the siblings.

We learned very early in our foster care career of 14 years to use Tea Tree Oil for preventing or ridding head lice. If I know my children are being exposed because a note has come home from school or we know a friend has lice then we add a few drops of Tea Tree Oil into the shampoo bottle and the cream rinse bottle. We keep a spray bottle in the bathroom to wet down hair every morning because it helps get those sleep bumps under control. We add a few drops of Tea Tree Oil into the water in the spray bottle. If we are aggressively fighting Lice then I also add a cup of vinegar. If the elementary children are wearing hats, or hooded jackets, I lightly spray them with the spray bottle as well. The Tea Tree Oil seems to act like a natural repellent for head lice. Again, if there is a know source of head lice then I also put a few drops into the washing machine when washing the bedding every week.

It works so well that when one of our children does get head lice, it doesn’t spread to the other seven. Our four year old was being exposed every week to head lice for several months. Occasionally, I would find a few in her hair. None of the other children in our home ever got infested with lice using this preventative. Using Tea Tree Oil also seems to be gentler to their hair and scalps then those professional over the counter lice treatments.

If a child does get head lice, pull out the Miracle Whip, Mayonnaise, or vegetable oil. The vegetable oil is more difficult to wash out but it does work. Take a cup of the one you chose to use and add two teaspoons of Tea Tree Oil to it. Mix it all together and rub it thoroughly through the child’s hair. If the child has long or very thick hair you might need to double the recipe, you want all of the hair completely coated. Cover the head with a shower cap or one of those quick covers and leave it on for at least twelve hours but preferably twenty-four hours. Then you get out your lice comb and spend hours removing all those nasty little nits. It’s time consuming, but if you don’t get all the nits out, their liable to hatch soon and you’ll find yourself starting all over again which is even more time consuming.

If you do have a child with head lice, then wash all of the bedding as indicated above. Either bag up stuffed animals or run them through the dryer for an hour. Use the spray bottle with the mixture to spray your furniture, carpet, mattresses, and anything else you cannot wash. You need to be very aggressive to avoid having lice spread to the siblings or back onto the child who just had them removed.

Jeff Sandquist’s photo stream uploaded March 17, 2008
Attribution license creative commons