Other Parents
When you first find out your child has lice, an immediate reaction may be to run home and quietly try to remedy the situation while feeling embarrassed. Unfortunately, this reaction may cause more destruction. The best course of action is to communicate with those in your immediate circle and your child’s school or daycare to help prevent an outbreak.
If you haven’t already, talk with your child’s school or daycare and help them to develop a lice response plan so that they are prepared for lice outbreaks and have an agreed-upon plan to react. If the plan is talked about before lice happens, you can take out the added emotional charge. A plan might include recommendations for how to check for lice and available resources for treatment, as well as ways to prevent head lice from spreading—avoiding head-to-head contact and the sharing of anything like hats, brushes and backpacks that contact hair.
If another parent tells you that their child has lice, thank them for telling you. It’s not easy, as the social stigma around head lice remains significant. Not talking about it makes it worse. After thanking the parent, the best message you can send is that it’s not that big of a deal—because it’s not! Yes, dealing with head lice is inconvenient, but aside from that, the more you can do to counteract the stress and embarrassment parents feel, the better.
If your children have lice, let other parents know through the school or through your network of relationships. Remember—it’s not your fault! You didn’t do anything wrong. Your children aren’t dirty, they just “caught” lice from another healthy child, much as children catch colds from one another. Have the facts handy: Lice aren’t dangerous. Lice outbreaks are unrelated to hygiene (in fact lice prefer clean hair and scalps). Lice only spread from head to head (they don’t fly or live on animals—stuffed or live). You might want to share our blog, “It’s Time to Shed Light on Lice” to help educate other parents about head lice and to demystify the experience.
Knowing that there is a fast, easy way to get rid of lice and eggs in a single treatment can relieve a lot of stress! Help ease other parents’ concerns and let them know about a Lice Clinics of America’s professional, medically sound, one-and-done, guaranteed lice checking and removal service.
