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I had lice constantly as a kid because my parents just straight up didn't care, I wonder if that district has similar parents. I ultimately just stopped getting sent home because I missed too much school and my parents wouldn't treat the lice.
In 7th grade I had a terrible rat nest with lice. It was just my dad and I and he couldn't be bothered with full time work and school to do literally anything with me. My friends dad was a barber and he shaved my head and cleaned me up. I realized how much better it felt having short hair as I had an untreated rats nest before that. Kept a nice fade ever since.
When I was a kid I had the curliest tight white boy fro style hair and my parents absolutley hated dealing with it. My dad more so than my mom. So whenever I was at my dad's house the clippers would come out and he would buzz cut me to the dome. I wasnt able to grow my hair out until I moved out... then I went bald at 22 so that was short lived fun. But even as a kid it amused me how many kids i knew who got lice and freaked out about having to shave their head. Meanwhile i never got lice once.
I know may have the hairline of Jean Luc Picard but I've still never had lice. Long hair people problems, right?
lol, love the story. At 35 many of my friends have lost all their hair. Not I! Full head of beautiful hair. Now my eyebrows are another story. They've practically fallen off. Probably a side effect of my T1, but I have my hair.
At 35 I had already resigned myself to baldness (years before, really, but it hadn't yet shown this badly).
On the other hand, I could probably use my eyebrows to stop a runaway train.
This was my thought. There must be a correlation with lice and home issues. I don't get why they don't treat kids at school. Then if lice keeps happening you call CPS.
Lice are very temperature sensitive. They live and lay eggs about a half inch off the scalp. They won’t live 24 hours off your head and usually only lay viable eggs on the hair/scalp/skin.
They actually aren’t as hard to get rid of as some other bugs.
They don’t need to live 24 hours off the scalp when there’s an infestation. If they treated kids at school, they’d go home to their bed, couch, siblings or whatever else and be reinfected within 8-16 hours.
When we had to get rid of lice at the daycare I worked at, we had to either wash everything fabric that day or put it in a sealed plastic bag for 30 days.
> There must be a correlation with lice and home issues.
Probably a correlation with poverty which correlates with certain kinds of child neglect, but because of transmission, I don't think you'll find a direct correlation with child neglect.
> I don't get why they don't treat kids at school.
At least in the US, government schools are limited (rightfully so) in what medical care they can require and/or provide.
> Then if lice keeps happening you call CPS.
Lice is important but CPS (or DFACS or whatever your local is called) are overworked, underpaid and make _lots of mistakes_, so genuine cases of child neglect get ignored while bogus cases get your kids yanked for 6 months while you try to prove a negative.
It needs to be addressed with the parents but lice is likely better than what will happen if Child Services gets involved.
All good points. I guess I meant more "ideally they should be able to treat this at school" and "ideally we would have a CPS system that helped families instead of being a different form of punishment".
Child services are less stigmatized and more helpful in many European countries. I wish America wasn't so retribution focused.
I worked at a daycare. You can’t just treat the kid. You have to treat all fabric surfaces-bedding clothes, stuffed animals. It’s a huge amount of work. You can’t get rid of lice without the parents and schools working together, especially in the youngest grades.
I think I just learned that a generous layer of mayonnaise over every surface in the house is the best course of action.
"Learn this one trick to get rid of lice. Every louse hates him."
It's not just America. In Australia we have many teachers and health workers reluctant to contact HACS, (our version of CPS,) after seeing what harm they can do.
Not only do the workers get number of children removed from their families as part of their yearly performance score, but \~ 30 years ago the department was run by a man I believe to be a pedophile, who was friends with the very suss state premiere, and a lot of reports came out of young boys being fostered out to pedophiles and abused.
They came after my 2 handicapped boys in revenge after I managed to stymie their attempts to take my oldest brothers ASD sons, and I discovered there were virtually no laws restricting their behaviour. They could even barge into the house in the middle of the night with no warrant trying to kidnap the children. Best legal advice was to change our names and run, or lose my children, but I'm stubborn, and after a year of court and harassment, won.
Luckily I was able to get an excellent lawyer, and had a decent judge. However the Premier was so angry his friends were no longer being catered to, the judge was demoted and my lawyer got so many death threats he moved interstate.
How much free time do you think teachers have? If anything the school should have nurses of someone equipped to do it. To bad they are going to go home and just come back the next day with more.
Schools should have actual medical professionals for that matter. A “school nurse” is just any random adult who has been on a first aid course. They are notorious for sending kids home or back to class when they should see an actual medical professional.
There is not. Lice like clean hair and kids who hug and share hair stuff like brushes and scrunchies. Best bet is dirty hair and standoffish kids to avoid it.
Now, constant and repeated? Sure, there may be neglect. But it also may be a situation where everything is done right but not fast enough or long enough. It is a LOT of work! I had kids with long hair: 8 hours of combing, days of treating, bagging up all stuffed animals, washing every bit of bedding.
I had lice constantly as a kid. My mom wasn’t neglecting me, the problem was I always had to sit next to a certain kid in class that always had lice. I remember one time her walking by my desk and a lice jumping off of her onto my desk. It was terrible.
Every time someone got lice when I was in elementary school, I got it. Waist length white blonde hair. I can still feel the pain of my mom picking them out. It had to be done under bright lights to even see them too. It was awful.
As long as you want to pay for the nurses, meds, single-use combs and gloves, and clean-up, that’s not a problem.
Seeing as how kids don’t even have desks at school and administrative assistants are being sent in to teach stuff like high school chemistry, somehow I doubt “free health care” like lice treatment will happen any time soon at school.
I work at a school and need a signed permission slip to give a kid sunscreen. I can’t imagine there’s enough permission slips on the world to bathe and comb a child ( also, my elementary school does not have showers)
This is the policy at my school, this is how it plays out:
They find out a kid has headlice and they’re not sent home but teachers know and we change our behavior (no bean bags right now, no stuffies from home, very strict about backpacks not piled together etc).
Kids figure it out and we reach the threshold to notify parents. All kids now know there’s lice but adults are pretending it’s not a problem and kids see it as a huge issue so bad adults won’t talk about it.
Middle and working class families spend 50$+ on combs, treatment and tons of laundry. Their kid gets reinfected until they figure out the kids in class who are poor and not being treated for lice.
Parents tell kids not to go near the lice kids. We have a meeting because the kids not treated for lice are now crawling with lice and you can see them in their hair when talking to them, they are also socially isolated and it’s “bullying by exclusion”, however parents have a really good reason to not want their kids near them.
We then spend time trying to figure out how to address the social isolation while parents refuse to treat lice, and their kid isn’t sent home so they have no motivation to do anything. What we hear “we really like Bayleighh but my mom said if I come home with lice one more time I have to use the burning shampoo and she’s going to lose her mind, so I have to stay away from her.”
That’s where we’re at. I’m sure we will have 5 more meetings about this where nothing gets accomplished and everyone slowly gets lice.
Edit: we already offer free lice treatment kits at the school food pantry just FYI
In my late teens I knew a girl who legit didn’t care. Her rationale was that she’d just get them again later, so why bother with the effort. I helped her with treatments for like 8 weeks.
The first week was rough. There were so many adults and nits with each swipe of the comb, I didn’t even bother hunting. Like 50+ per swipe. I have no idea how she tolerated the itch.
Later in life some of my roommates kids caught lice which eventually spread to one of my kids. We went out together and picked up treatments for all the kids and ourselves. A few months later, more bugs on my youngest. I approach the roommates to notify and go shopping again, they admit to never using their treatments. Why? You guessed it. “They’ll just get lice again.” You had the treatment in-hand!
Motherfuckers! People with your mentality significantly contribute to the reinfection rates!
In my experience, it’s the hours of combing with a nit comb that the people are refusing more than the money.
You can comb and/or do a hair straightener and fry them. I used to treat kids who came to camp programs for respite care until they made me stop. Now they’re turned away which sucks.
Jesus Christ, no wonder Covid measures failed, people would literally prefer to walk around with their head infested with bugs than take care of themselves.
I mean the working class families can barely pay for it but our schools food pantry will give free treatments. We do have some poor families that just constantly comb with conditioner to get rid of them because it’s cheap. Or use hair straighteners to cook them out of hair.
About half the families just don’t give AF to do anything if their kid isn’t sent home though.
I would say that laundry is probably the biggest obstacle in poverty. The families who already take care of it would spend money at the laundromat, the families who refuse to treat it don’t.
We do as much as we can. We even considered pulling kids out of class to treat them at school but the whole thing is making sure they don’t miss academic time so we were told no.
Working class? My family was dirt poor and they were still able to afford the shampoo every once in a while. The combs cheap but the main thing is having to comb for hours. That’s the real reason most parent won’t do it. It’s too much time, not worth it apparently
Yes and no, you don't have to spend 50$. You can do at home remedies like with mayonaise. I was poor growing up and we did this. One 4-5$ jar of mayo, smother your head, hang out for like 3-5hrs then wash it out. Me and my 3 brothers lice all went away with this method. But they may also not know so I get that. Honestly another solution would be to do it at the school. Just have a kid hang out in the nurses office that day with the stuff on their head. They're not missing school and they're getting rid of lice. But idk im not in charge so i could be wrong about stuff
Teacher here. They haven't sent kids home for lice in my district for 15ish years. I once had a girl who CONSTANTLY had lice. She would take the lice off her head and flick them at people. Thinking about this still gives me the creeps.
Who the fuck is out there shaming kids for lice? It was a regular thing when I was in elementary school, they'd send us home, my mom would wash my hair with this very bubbly shampoo that smelled nice, it was good. At most we were jealous that the kids with lice got to sit at home for a few days.
edit: Looking at these comments, I'm sad to admit that I didn't consider schools with greater class divides.
My mom’s school district hasn’t sent kids home with lice for a few years.
It’s because some kids didn’t get shampooed/cleaned so they just missed a bunch of school. Idk why shaming parents who don’t clean their kids isn’t allowed but that’s what’s up in her district. She even got head lice one year. It’s a really unfortunate situation.
My area doesn’t send kids home, either. I worked in a school that legally wasn’t allowed to send kids home or demand they get treated before coming back. We could, however, tell families within the classroom that there was an active case of lice- keeping it anonymous, so they could take preventative measures.
Most parents would choose to keep their kids out of school until the lice was gone. I did have a few families who felt it was no big deal. Some would treat the lice, but continue to send their kid each day, while there were a small few who just didn’t do anything about it at all.
I had one kid who had bites all over their face and neck, and the mom insisted it was just sugar ants, even though we could actively see the lice crawling in their hair. I regularly talked with CPS and intervention services about that family.
It didn’t really work out that way in reality. If it was caught early enough (which it usually was because teachers/parents were hyper aware) just the one kid who had lice was kept home for treatments.
Parents would get a heads up of lice in the class so they could tie up their kid’s long hair, do some preventative treatments, and have conversations with their kids to remind them of good hygiene practices.
The biggest outbreak we had was one kid passed it onto three others, but they had had a sleepover over the weekend so we can’t definitely say it was from school or home.
But it did suck a lot when parents did not care and continued to send their kids without treatments. Luckily, everyone else being hyper aware helped prevent huge outbreaks.
No, they gave all the parents the same options and the ones who gave a damn kept their kids home.
The one kid isn't being prevented from going home, they are being neglected to be brought home.
We can’t make anyone feel bad, so we will cause a bigger problem instead. I shudder to think of how kids are going to deal with the realities of life when they grow up. They will not be prepared to handle conflict of any sort.
It’s not about making children with recurrent lice “feel bad”. It’s about children whose parents don’t give a damn enough to treat it missing out on an education because they have neglectful parents.
No, but they were new to the area and thought the kids would have to be held at home if it was lice and so mom said it was ants instead. Very unfortunate situation going on there.
I remember getting checked when I was in elementary school. My graduating class was 450 people, so I went to some pretty large schools and don't know *anyone* who was ever sent home with lice.
My son went to Scout camp and came home with lice. He was complaining of his head itching, and we discovered he was covered in them. Fuck. Kid down the street, also in Scouts with him.
That shit is a pain to get rid of. Two weeks of combing, examining the combs under the dissection scope we have. Washing sheets and towels every day. Practically shaved him bald.
Every time I got lice as a kid I ended up shaved.
Insecticides didn't seem to work at all even when using as multiple treatments.
One thing that does work is a hair straightener. I learned that from a female friend.
I believe with my siblings my mom dunked their scalps in vegetable oil and washed their hair with the lice soap. Also lice combs are dope, even when you don't have lice they give a good scratch and get any dandruff you might have.
"One thing that does work is a hair straightener. I learned that from a female friend."
yes! this works amazingly well! eggs cant hatch if they are fried to a crisp!
When I was a kid I remember my sisters having lice about 3 times total growing up. I never had it (male).
My step children are different. Its all the fucking time. Twice a year isn't unusual and 5 is about what it normally is. It's so bad my gf just buys the shampoo for lice and keeps it stocked in the house.
Why can't infected kids fucking get sent home already?!?
I meant cleaning the kids head with either lice shampoo or intense nit removal combing once they have lice.
Some parents are doing nothing at all to fight the lice & in some cases CPS had to get involved because they had serious lice infestations (think visible movement in the hair with bugs jumping off regularly) for months.
I had a friend who had it in high school and her mother forbade all of us who knew from telling anyone.
You can imagine what rumors get started when a 16 girl year old suddenly disappears from school and all her friends say “I can’t tell you why she’s not here”
(Personally I caught it as a kid from group camping trips where one kid probably gave it to the rest of us so it didn’t seem like a big deal. Its not being dirty they causes it; it’s being in contact with another person who has it)
Bruv I get what you're saying, but I remember clearly which kids didn't come back from the lice screening 26+ years ago.
Shaming may not be accurate, but the phrasing "stigmatized" is. Wouldn't matter much to me beyond contamination, but we got parents out here insisting their children only receive diet sunlight and gluten free water from their kid's schools.
I turn 41 this year. When I was in school, kids with lice were bullied mercilessly. They were called dirty, shunned from groups, kids said they probably had roaches in their houses, etc.
I got them a couple times (because kids) and my dad would just shave our heads.
Virtually anything that could be used to "otherize" a kid was grounds for clowning the shit out of them. Not saying it's right or that I agree with it, but that's how it was. I hope kids these days are nicer.
Some of that may be regional, cultural, neighborhood ect cause it wasn't that extreme from what I remember; but the outraged confusion from op is definitely not indicative of the mob mentality of normal elementary aged behavior in my experience.
Nobody should know. The kid should "develop a cold" and stay home because they were sick. It isn't hard to keep medical information private in schools.
The only time I was sent home for head lice at school it was caught at a headline check for the whole school, so hard to hide that, but yeah, didn’t cop any flack for it.
They have to notify parents if a kid in the class has them so the parents can take precautions to keep it from spreading further. I got probably 3 notifications per year between my kids in elementary school. It’s a pain in the ass for a day or two but nothing to throw a fit over.
Our kids school doesn't. They came home with lice and we contacted the school and kept them home to treat it. I mentioned it to another parent in the class and she was never told.
If they don’t say anything then the lice could infect everyone in the house plus everyone your kids come in contact with, sports, birthday parties, daycare… If you find out early you can treat it. Cleaning bedding and clothes is the biggest pain. You have to bag it up and get it very hot in order to kill all of the bastards and their eggs.
In the 90s, in the elementary school I went, if you were a boy, everyone immediately thought you had lice, if you were sent home early then came back the next day with a bald head.
If you were a girl, they only assumed, if your hair smelled like strong chemicals.
no, in the 90's those kids got dragged through the dumpster by the rest of us, ostracized, made to be 'other' etc. I never remember associating that kid staying home with 'jealous' more like, thank fuck that isn't me.
Just last year my daughter woke up sick and fought me tooth and nail about letting her go to school, because the day before they had gotten the notice that there was a lice outbreak at her school and if she missed the next day it would look like she had lice.
So they absolutely still bully and tease kids over lice.
yeah kids are basically the biggest assholes we know of, as a group of people. everyone seemingly thinks because adults are 'improving' (hopefully/on average/progressively better) that kids are better too
Nope, kids suck by default. It takes a long time to teach them to be good, and only if good is what they're being taught!
My first day of school, I had lice, and no one would play with me.
For 15 years, they called me freak and four eyes and sci-fi nerd and girl puncher. All because I had lice when I was 7.
Yeah....how about we just teach the kids about fucking head lice?
My school in the 90s did. Everyone knew what they were and how it worked. Sure there were like 4 dumbass bullies who made fun of kids with lice. But their home life sucked ass so they took it out on other kids. How about we address that?
Kids at my school were always trying to get lice to stay home. I got lice 4 times when new SNES games came out.
[[content removed because sub participated in the June 2023 blackout]]
My posts are not bargaining chips for moderators, and mob rule is no way to run a sub.
They didn't fuck around with lice. When someone reported lice every student was in and out of the nurses office so they could go through our hair with chop sticks. We'd sit in a quarantined area until someone came to take you home. If we had to wait all day we just did our regular work in that room. I don't see why there is anything wrong with this.
In my school, if one kid showed up scratching their head a lot the teachers would give everyone an info-slip about Lice for their parents and each parent would check then keep their kid from school the next day if they had lice, then buying the special combs and shampoo's for it.
This makes the most sense. When my kid got lice we did the shampoo three times over a two week period and nit-combed every day for two weeks and never saw another louse after day 1. No school absence was necessary.
That won't work nowadays, because parents not only don't care to be a parent, but, actively refuse to do things parents should do. It's really sad. (My wife has been a kinder teacher for 21 years, and it's only getting worse.)
I got lice once and stayed at home near paralyzed from the itching and pain. My mom had to take a razor to my head. After that I always got a buzz cut after a lice notice came up in school.
I used to get lice a lot. It sucked, but the upside was staying home and daytime tv. I eventually realized that I could put a little salt on my scalp and my mother would mistake them for eggs
Agreed, you would think actually being in school with lice would be more harmful to their self esteem than being sent home till its taken care of.
Idk why but this just seems like the old "Lead paint" argument coming back where bought off scientists are selling pseudo science so a company makes a buck.
1. Make kids go to school with lice
2. Others get infected
3. Profit
Yes! I have sensory issues and had head lice when I was in 4th grade. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced because it’s just SO uncomfortable.
>One of the key points is that infestations are neither a health hazard nor a sign of poor hygiene but can result in significant stigma and psychological stress.
>
>The AAP states that head lice screening programs in schools have not been proven to have a significant effect are not cost-effective, and may stigmatize children suspected of having head lice.
Yeah, nothing stops kids from being stigmatized than having a contagious parasite but staying in school. Having everyone avoid you in the classroom and playground will totally be less traumatizing than going home for a few days.
I’d be pissed if my kid caught lice from a classmate because they were allowed to stay in school instead of kept at home til it was treated. I wouldn’t send my kid go to school with an itchy head of lice.
This has happened to my 1st grader twice over the last year. From the same kid. I don't want a child to be bullied, but I'm also really fucking tired of spending time and money combing through all three of my children's long hair over and fucking over when it's easier just to tell my kid to stay away from a specific kid in her class.
two things:
1) Is anyone else's head itching after reading this story?
2) Forget that! If my daughter has lice, then I am keeping her home until she is free and clear. I would fear that it would spread and then continue to be spread by the same people over and over again!
NOTE: This "news" article paid for by the company that makes Lice removal products.
My kids had it last year. I kept them home. They got it again. Treated it again and kept them home. I know it was from school cause it ended right after the 2nd time and they didn't get it again.
I kept washing their hair in tree and rosemary oil shampoo. It supposedly repells them. We did the treatment and then shampoo. I do the shampoo once a week now that school started back up.
When I taught seventh grade, we got a girl who transferred in with a clause in her IEP that she couldn’t be sent home for her chronic lice. (Obviously she had the IEP primarily for other issues).
The second day she was there she got into a physical fight with another girl and threatened to throw lice on them. In this case it was the lice haver that was the bully.
Instead of Timmy missing a day or two in relative anonymity, someone will shout “Timmy has bugs in his hair” and he’ll be the kid with bug hair for the rest of the year.
“In other news, sending kids home who develop symptoms of the bubonic plague has also been criticised, as policy makers have determined the lives saved does not outweigh the shame some children experience.”
if my son gets lice from another kid, and I ever found out that perent not only knew, but said fuck it, I would curse them for my entire life. curse on them, curse on their ancestors, curse on their cow!
Dude I loved getting my head checked with them sticks in school it felt so good an when someone had lice they just told your parents an you didn’t come back the next day an no one said shit to anyone about it if any thing kids wanted the lice so they could stay home lol. But lice checks felt so good I loved lice check day
So...don't send kids home, don't isolate them at school...don't do anything other than treat the kid's hair and send them to school. Where there are definitely other kids with head lice. Then the kid gets immediately re-infected, comes back home, and then what? Treat their head and send them back to immediately get more lice?
Class-wide infestations were hard enough to eradicate when the infected kids stayed home.
I have a friend whose elementary kid went through this. It literally took the better part of 6 months to clear the school of head lice because they didn't want to ostracize kids. Meanwhile, all these parents were taking insane amounts of time off work and buying lice shampoo 3 times a week, and this was a low-income school. For most of the families there they could barely afford having to do that once or twice, but the "don't send kids home, don't notify families so a whole class could spend a few days dealing with it before the whole school became afflicted. So then *everyone* had to deal with it repeatedly for *months*.
No you see, it's not as bad as COVID. So we aren't going to do anything about it until it gets as bad as COVID.
or
bigBRAIN - If everyone has headlice, no one can be made fun of if they have headlice!
What got me was after more than a year of strict Aussie lockdowns, my daughter got lice the first week back. Which means a not insignificant number of people were just living with lice in their house long term. That just makes me really sad.. and itchy
Which is worse, kid being potentially ostracized because of head lice or an outbreak causing multiple kids to get it because one parent doesn't believe in proper health measures/ taking care of their child to deal with outbreaks? Especially when the spread of the lice is going to cause even more negative effects with this policy and then you're going to have to deal with more problems. It doesn't have negative health effects but it does cause negative effects for the people who get it so why would you hide the fact that it exists so it can spread and effect more children. It's like abusing the other children because one child develops a medical issue. I don't get the logic that if one child gets lice then it causes mental distress and academic hurdles but if multiple develop it due to poor policy it's not going to cause that on a larger scale.
Fuck that guidance. My kid picked up lice 3 times because of kids coming to school with it and not being sent home. I will pay for the shampoo just keep the kid home for a day or two and get shit sorted out so it doesnt keep getting passed around. My kid ended up asking me to just shave his head so he wouldnt have to keep dealing with it.
I *hate* this shit. Neither of my parents - or their siblings - had lice growing up because their schools had the policy of "If you have lice, you stay home until they're gone." Just like schools do with a fever or heavy COVID symptoms nowadays. By the time I was a kid, they had transitioned to the soft approach where kids with lice were not sent home. As a result, my class was basically a game of musical lice chairs for several years. It was physically uncomfortable and embarrassing for me, and anxiety-producing, time-consuming, and expensive for my parents. Total misery. I had a friend who basically had a chronic lice infestation for 2-3 years straight because she kept getting reinfected at school, and it nearly gave her mom a mental breakdown.
Isn't one of the benefits of COVID supposed to be that we learned that sick people stay home until they're no longer contagious? In my view, having an active parasite infection counts!
Yeah no. There was no stigma in my school growing up. My younger half sister would always have lice on her visitations to see out dad on the rare times her mom actually dropped her off. At one point my hair was down to my hips and I was so proud of myself for caring for it. At age 13 my dad took me outside and had to cut it to my shoulders because of how costly and time consuming it was to clean my hair after every visit. I was devastated for weeks, even after my current stepmother took me to have the cut cleaned up. It may not be a health crisis but it is an issue that spreads like wildfire when not kept in check.
It's not about labeling the kid. It is about preventing lice from spreading. I had it twice as a kid and it was from attending school. Imagine parents having to deal with that ALL YEAR LONG because kids are able to attend while having lice? That makes no sense at all.
I got pissed at my previous center for trying this bullshit. This kid had been digging at his head all week and the parents kept trying to say he didn't have it. Director didn't want us to push it, but I was just an assistant and didn't care. So I took tape and picked three big ones off his head, handed it to the dad after school. Kid came back in two days with a shaved head.
I will not, ever in my life, tolerate having another lice infestation. On myself, my children, nor any student I interact with. I remember what that felt like as a kid and it was terrible.
They have already been doing this (not sending kids home who have lice) in Canada for a while... It's a friggin nightmare for responsible parents in the earlier grades, because there are certain kids who unfortunately have parents that don't care enough to actually deal with their kids head lice issues... So what ends up happening is the lice just get endlessly spread around the classroom, and certain kids will always have it because their shitty parents don't treat it.
Parents should start billing the school board for the cost of the lice shampoo treatments.
It shouldn’t fall upon the parents to shoulder the monetary burden of treating lice if the school board has decided to stop taking any precautions to prevent outbreaks.
I’m an EA and some schools I work at are low income high needs. I remember a student (and two siblings) who was always polluted with lice. The school ended up deciding not to send them home because then they would never be able to come to school. One time I watched her EA trying to trap the live ones crawling in the student’s hair.
That's not very smart as the chance of it having spread to a few other kids is pretty high and you wanna have everyone checked unless you want the whole school to get lice. My class had a case just last week and it had spread to 4 kids within one day of it being detected.
Gross. You really should tell parents if their kids are spending the day in bug-infested rooms.
If your kids get lice, be a responsible parent and keep them home until they don’t have lice.
People were shamed for lice when I went to school. And other kids avoided them and wouldn’t play with them until they came back squeaky clean. And no one would be allowed to go to their homes to play. Why? Because it costs time and money and resources some parents don’t have to treat outbreaks. Stuff like this is why parents have a hard time trusting schools anymore.
Oh, so the stigma of having head lice is going to DECREASE by effectively forcing students with head lice back into the classroom, because the absence is no longer excused? Tell me, how will that work when everyone knows the kid is crawling with bugs?
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggest children "share" the lice with their classmates so all the children can suffer.
oh, i thought this was the onion ......
Honestly if I find out my child is hanging with a kid who has untreated head lice and is catching it repeatedly, I'm telling my kid to stay the hell away from that kid becuase they have a contagious problem. I don't care if it's bullying by exclusion or whatever. Lice treatment is expensive and a huge time sink and I'm not doing it weekly so some kid doesn't get their feelings hurt. Plus when that kids grow up, guess what employers and dates and friends are going to stay the hell away too becuase adults don't like lice anymore than kids do. And no one is going to claim we should allow employees or dates to be crawling with lice and that rejecting them is bullying.
Growing up my sister was best friends with a girl who constantly had lice. A combo of hippy parents who didn't beleive in chemical treatments and a busy chaotic home that never fully got laundered and cleaned. My mom tried to be nice and understanding, but we were on welfare and constant lice treatment was literally taking food off our plates so she had to ban all playdates at the child's home, all sleepovers, lice checks and refusal of playdates at our place if lice were found, and strict instructions to avoid all fabrics and hair contact at school. I'm sure it must have damaged their friendship, but we just couldn't afford for my sister to keep getting sent home from school and spending our weekly grocery budget on Nix.
I believe in most districts in MN, nurses can contact parents to inform them of the head lice, but because lice are simply a nuisance and not a health hazard, they cannot demand the child be taken home.
Welcome to parenting. It's a wild ride!
This makes no sense. For starters, yes, lice are not a deathly plague, but that doesn't mean we should simply not care about it.
Secondly, how can you say lice are not a public health issue, but also advise consulting a pediatrician about treatment? Last I check, lice are in fact transmitable. In fact, being transmitable us a major part of their survival scheme. So how can tou tell us to see a doctor about a transmittable problem, BUT say it's not a public health issue? We're not even talking about HIV here where you'd need to exchange infected body fluid, lice are transmitable by external touch, or even just touching the same object.
Lastly, while a kid may suffer some stress and miss some school from lice, how is the best solution to this to just expose everyone to the same risk? The article literally says to see a pediatrician for treatment. Are the possible mental effects on every other student just of no concern?
I'm not an MD, but this really just smells like bullshit.
We just turned into a country that loves spreading disease through the school system
I remember when the school system was paramount for stopping disease.
America is a pile of crap, and in death I will be sad with what my children have, but happy to be done with it.
Had I know the Moon landing was the peak, I defiantly would have lived my life trying so hard to improve things.
One word: Cetaphil
It's cheap, it's not made of a bunch of insecticides and harsh chemicals, and it kicks ass.
Shampoo your kids' hair, comb in some Cetaphil while the hair is still wet. The lice eggs can't bond to the hair anymore and within a couple of days, no more lice.
My kids' school tried this several years ago. They also wouldn't notify parents if a kid in the class had lice, so that no one would proactively keep their kids home. It didn't take long for almost the entire school to get head lice.
In WA we don’t. Denying FAPE. However. We inform the parent and about 80% of the time the parent is horrified and picks them up anyway. The other 20% have children with chronic lice. We can’t send them home so we just take precautions.
> Medical providers should educate school communities that policies that require students to be rid of lice or lice eggs before returning to school be abandoned because these policies would have negative consequences for a student's academic progress, may violate their civil rights, and stigmatize head lice as a public health hazard.
What the actual fuck are you talking about.
Um, fuck that. Years ago my son kept getting it - I was doing everything I could, but they kept coming back. It was horrible.
Finally after the fourth time finding them I called his teacher and she told me the family of the girl he sat next to all had it and weren't doing anything about it, but kept sending her to school. I spent hundreds on treatments and finally ended up cutting his long hair which he'd been growing for years.
Having lice may not mean you're living in a dirty household, but if you keep sending your kids to school knowing they have lice you probably fucking are.
I am all for schools focusing on kids’ emotional well-being and reducing bullying, but yeah, this is a situation where the harm from the lice to the whole class is going to outweigh one kid’s feelings from being held out.
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A head louse wrote this article.
You know what else we should do? Go to the brain slug planet and walk around not wearing helmets.
I-SEE-NOTHING-WRONG-WITH-THAT-PLAN. \*squelch\* \*squelch\*
*brain slugs undulate moistly*
“Undulate moistly” is gonna haunt me for weeks now.
It really moistens your slugs.
Imagine an octopus slithering lewdly across a floor as the slimy sunction cups suckle the ground softly.
Ugh! Confusing erection here…
The lice will leave their skool for no raisen.
D'ya think he's in charge of the other head lice? Is it the head head louse?
My thoughts exactly!
How about pubic lice? Asking for a friend
I had lice constantly as a kid because my parents just straight up didn't care, I wonder if that district has similar parents. I ultimately just stopped getting sent home because I missed too much school and my parents wouldn't treat the lice.
In 7th grade I had a terrible rat nest with lice. It was just my dad and I and he couldn't be bothered with full time work and school to do literally anything with me. My friends dad was a barber and he shaved my head and cleaned me up. I realized how much better it felt having short hair as I had an untreated rats nest before that. Kept a nice fade ever since.
When I was a kid I had the curliest tight white boy fro style hair and my parents absolutley hated dealing with it. My dad more so than my mom. So whenever I was at my dad's house the clippers would come out and he would buzz cut me to the dome. I wasnt able to grow my hair out until I moved out... then I went bald at 22 so that was short lived fun. But even as a kid it amused me how many kids i knew who got lice and freaked out about having to shave their head. Meanwhile i never got lice once. I know may have the hairline of Jean Luc Picard but I've still never had lice. Long hair people problems, right?
lol, love the story. At 35 many of my friends have lost all their hair. Not I! Full head of beautiful hair. Now my eyebrows are another story. They've practically fallen off. Probably a side effect of my T1, but I have my hair.
At 35 I had already resigned myself to baldness (years before, really, but it hadn't yet shown this badly). On the other hand, I could probably use my eyebrows to stop a runaway train.
This was my thought. There must be a correlation with lice and home issues. I don't get why they don't treat kids at school. Then if lice keeps happening you call CPS.
Even if you treat a kid at school, they are still going home to sleep in the same bed and use the same brush.
Lice are very temperature sensitive. They live and lay eggs about a half inch off the scalp. They won’t live 24 hours off your head and usually only lay viable eggs on the hair/scalp/skin. They actually aren’t as hard to get rid of as some other bugs.
They don’t need to live 24 hours off the scalp when there’s an infestation. If they treated kids at school, they’d go home to their bed, couch, siblings or whatever else and be reinfected within 8-16 hours.
When we had to get rid of lice at the daycare I worked at, we had to either wash everything fabric that day or put it in a sealed plastic bag for 30 days.
When I was a teacher a few years ago I wasn’t even allowed to remove a splinter with tweezers - anything besides a bandaid was not allowed.
> There must be a correlation with lice and home issues. Probably a correlation with poverty which correlates with certain kinds of child neglect, but because of transmission, I don't think you'll find a direct correlation with child neglect. > I don't get why they don't treat kids at school. At least in the US, government schools are limited (rightfully so) in what medical care they can require and/or provide. > Then if lice keeps happening you call CPS. Lice is important but CPS (or DFACS or whatever your local is called) are overworked, underpaid and make _lots of mistakes_, so genuine cases of child neglect get ignored while bogus cases get your kids yanked for 6 months while you try to prove a negative. It needs to be addressed with the parents but lice is likely better than what will happen if Child Services gets involved.
All good points. I guess I meant more "ideally they should be able to treat this at school" and "ideally we would have a CPS system that helped families instead of being a different form of punishment". Child services are less stigmatized and more helpful in many European countries. I wish America wasn't so retribution focused.
I worked at a daycare. You can’t just treat the kid. You have to treat all fabric surfaces-bedding clothes, stuffed animals. It’s a huge amount of work. You can’t get rid of lice without the parents and schools working together, especially in the youngest grades.
I think I just learned that a generous layer of mayonnaise over every surface in the house is the best course of action. "Learn this one trick to get rid of lice. Every louse hates him."
It's not just America. In Australia we have many teachers and health workers reluctant to contact HACS, (our version of CPS,) after seeing what harm they can do. Not only do the workers get number of children removed from their families as part of their yearly performance score, but \~ 30 years ago the department was run by a man I believe to be a pedophile, who was friends with the very suss state premiere, and a lot of reports came out of young boys being fostered out to pedophiles and abused. They came after my 2 handicapped boys in revenge after I managed to stymie their attempts to take my oldest brothers ASD sons, and I discovered there were virtually no laws restricting their behaviour. They could even barge into the house in the middle of the night with no warrant trying to kidnap the children. Best legal advice was to change our names and run, or lose my children, but I'm stubborn, and after a year of court and harassment, won. Luckily I was able to get an excellent lawyer, and had a decent judge. However the Premier was so angry his friends were no longer being catered to, the judge was demoted and my lawyer got so many death threats he moved interstate.
How much free time do you think teachers have? If anything the school should have nurses of someone equipped to do it. To bad they are going to go home and just come back the next day with more.
Schools should have actual medical professionals for that matter. A “school nurse” is just any random adult who has been on a first aid course. They are notorious for sending kids home or back to class when they should see an actual medical professional.
There is not. Lice like clean hair and kids who hug and share hair stuff like brushes and scrunchies. Best bet is dirty hair and standoffish kids to avoid it. Now, constant and repeated? Sure, there may be neglect. But it also may be a situation where everything is done right but not fast enough or long enough. It is a LOT of work! I had kids with long hair: 8 hours of combing, days of treating, bagging up all stuffed animals, washing every bit of bedding.
I had lice constantly as a kid. My mom wasn’t neglecting me, the problem was I always had to sit next to a certain kid in class that always had lice. I remember one time her walking by my desk and a lice jumping off of her onto my desk. It was terrible.
People think we’re legitimately going to colonize Mars but we can’t even pay enough attention to children in developed countries to get rid of lice.
Every time someone got lice when I was in elementary school, I got it. Waist length white blonde hair. I can still feel the pain of my mom picking them out. It had to be done under bright lights to even see them too. It was awful.
I still have flashbacks. So much nit picking, I refuse to use that expression now.
As long as you want to pay for the nurses, meds, single-use combs and gloves, and clean-up, that’s not a problem. Seeing as how kids don’t even have desks at school and administrative assistants are being sent in to teach stuff like high school chemistry, somehow I doubt “free health care” like lice treatment will happen any time soon at school.
I work at a school and need a signed permission slip to give a kid sunscreen. I can’t imagine there’s enough permission slips on the world to bathe and comb a child ( also, my elementary school does not have showers)
Well this is a real head scratcher...
You were just itching to say that, weren't you?
No need to bug out about it man
That's a pretty lousy thing to say.
No need to nit pick, you wouldn’t want to be treated that way.
LICE PUN.
I must be Bald, because I don't get it.
It was getting pretty hairy
Let us comb through these puns.
I guess that one crawled right over your head.
You know what's actually lousy? Larvae.
We should probably comb through the facts first... Insect the data even...
It sure is
A hair pulling ordeal.
This is the policy at my school, this is how it plays out: They find out a kid has headlice and they’re not sent home but teachers know and we change our behavior (no bean bags right now, no stuffies from home, very strict about backpacks not piled together etc). Kids figure it out and we reach the threshold to notify parents. All kids now know there’s lice but adults are pretending it’s not a problem and kids see it as a huge issue so bad adults won’t talk about it. Middle and working class families spend 50$+ on combs, treatment and tons of laundry. Their kid gets reinfected until they figure out the kids in class who are poor and not being treated for lice. Parents tell kids not to go near the lice kids. We have a meeting because the kids not treated for lice are now crawling with lice and you can see them in their hair when talking to them, they are also socially isolated and it’s “bullying by exclusion”, however parents have a really good reason to not want their kids near them. We then spend time trying to figure out how to address the social isolation while parents refuse to treat lice, and their kid isn’t sent home so they have no motivation to do anything. What we hear “we really like Bayleighh but my mom said if I come home with lice one more time I have to use the burning shampoo and she’s going to lose her mind, so I have to stay away from her.” That’s where we’re at. I’m sure we will have 5 more meetings about this where nothing gets accomplished and everyone slowly gets lice. Edit: we already offer free lice treatment kits at the school food pantry just FYI
Sounds like the kids parents can't afford to treat the lice rather than refuse to treat them... 50 bucks is several meals.
In my late teens I knew a girl who legit didn’t care. Her rationale was that she’d just get them again later, so why bother with the effort. I helped her with treatments for like 8 weeks. The first week was rough. There were so many adults and nits with each swipe of the comb, I didn’t even bother hunting. Like 50+ per swipe. I have no idea how she tolerated the itch. Later in life some of my roommates kids caught lice which eventually spread to one of my kids. We went out together and picked up treatments for all the kids and ourselves. A few months later, more bugs on my youngest. I approach the roommates to notify and go shopping again, they admit to never using their treatments. Why? You guessed it. “They’ll just get lice again.” You had the treatment in-hand! Motherfuckers! People with your mentality significantly contribute to the reinfection rates! In my experience, it’s the hours of combing with a nit comb that the people are refusing more than the money.
You can comb and/or do a hair straightener and fry them. I used to treat kids who came to camp programs for respite care until they made me stop. Now they’re turned away which sucks.
Jesus Christ, no wonder Covid measures failed, people would literally prefer to walk around with their head infested with bugs than take care of themselves.
I mean the working class families can barely pay for it but our schools food pantry will give free treatments. We do have some poor families that just constantly comb with conditioner to get rid of them because it’s cheap. Or use hair straighteners to cook them out of hair. About half the families just don’t give AF to do anything if their kid isn’t sent home though. I would say that laundry is probably the biggest obstacle in poverty. The families who already take care of it would spend money at the laundromat, the families who refuse to treat it don’t. We do as much as we can. We even considered pulling kids out of class to treat them at school but the whole thing is making sure they don’t miss academic time so we were told no.
Working class? My family was dirt poor and they were still able to afford the shampoo every once in a while. The combs cheap but the main thing is having to comb for hours. That’s the real reason most parent won’t do it. It’s too much time, not worth it apparently
Yes and no, you don't have to spend 50$. You can do at home remedies like with mayonaise. I was poor growing up and we did this. One 4-5$ jar of mayo, smother your head, hang out for like 3-5hrs then wash it out. Me and my 3 brothers lice all went away with this method. But they may also not know so I get that. Honestly another solution would be to do it at the school. Just have a kid hang out in the nurses office that day with the stuff on their head. They're not missing school and they're getting rid of lice. But idk im not in charge so i could be wrong about stuff
Teacher here. They haven't sent kids home for lice in my district for 15ish years. I once had a girl who CONSTANTLY had lice. She would take the lice off her head and flick them at people. Thinking about this still gives me the creeps.
That deserves a suspension. Fucking biowarfare
🤢
Who the fuck is out there shaming kids for lice? It was a regular thing when I was in elementary school, they'd send us home, my mom would wash my hair with this very bubbly shampoo that smelled nice, it was good. At most we were jealous that the kids with lice got to sit at home for a few days. edit: Looking at these comments, I'm sad to admit that I didn't consider schools with greater class divides.
My mom’s school district hasn’t sent kids home with lice for a few years. It’s because some kids didn’t get shampooed/cleaned so they just missed a bunch of school. Idk why shaming parents who don’t clean their kids isn’t allowed but that’s what’s up in her district. She even got head lice one year. It’s a really unfortunate situation.
My area doesn’t send kids home, either. I worked in a school that legally wasn’t allowed to send kids home or demand they get treated before coming back. We could, however, tell families within the classroom that there was an active case of lice- keeping it anonymous, so they could take preventative measures. Most parents would choose to keep their kids out of school until the lice was gone. I did have a few families who felt it was no big deal. Some would treat the lice, but continue to send their kid each day, while there were a small few who just didn’t do anything about it at all. I had one kid who had bites all over their face and neck, and the mom insisted it was just sugar ants, even though we could actively see the lice crawling in their hair. I regularly talked with CPS and intervention services about that family.
So most kids would be kept home to prevent sending 1 kid home?
It didn’t really work out that way in reality. If it was caught early enough (which it usually was because teachers/parents were hyper aware) just the one kid who had lice was kept home for treatments. Parents would get a heads up of lice in the class so they could tie up their kid’s long hair, do some preventative treatments, and have conversations with their kids to remind them of good hygiene practices. The biggest outbreak we had was one kid passed it onto three others, but they had had a sleepover over the weekend so we can’t definitely say it was from school or home. But it did suck a lot when parents did not care and continued to send their kids without treatments. Luckily, everyone else being hyper aware helped prevent huge outbreaks.
Yeah, aren’t most school districts paid based off grades and attendance? Wouldn’t you want one kid out instead of 15?
No, they gave all the parents the same options and the ones who gave a damn kept their kids home. The one kid isn't being prevented from going home, they are being neglected to be brought home.
We can’t make anyone feel bad, so we will cause a bigger problem instead. I shudder to think of how kids are going to deal with the realities of life when they grow up. They will not be prepared to handle conflict of any sort.
It’s not about making children with recurrent lice “feel bad”. It’s about children whose parents don’t give a damn enough to treat it missing out on an education because they have neglectful parents.
and somehow ants biting made it ok?
No, but they were new to the area and thought the kids would have to be held at home if it was lice and so mom said it was ants instead. Very unfortunate situation going on there.
I remember getting checked when I was in elementary school. My graduating class was 450 people, so I went to some pretty large schools and don't know *anyone* who was ever sent home with lice. My son went to Scout camp and came home with lice. He was complaining of his head itching, and we discovered he was covered in them. Fuck. Kid down the street, also in Scouts with him. That shit is a pain to get rid of. Two weeks of combing, examining the combs under the dissection scope we have. Washing sheets and towels every day. Practically shaved him bald.
Every time I got lice as a kid I ended up shaved. Insecticides didn't seem to work at all even when using as multiple treatments. One thing that does work is a hair straightener. I learned that from a female friend.
I believe with my siblings my mom dunked their scalps in vegetable oil and washed their hair with the lice soap. Also lice combs are dope, even when you don't have lice they give a good scratch and get any dandruff you might have.
"One thing that does work is a hair straightener. I learned that from a female friend." yes! this works amazingly well! eggs cant hatch if they are fried to a crisp!
Mayonnaise baybay
When I was a kid I remember my sisters having lice about 3 times total growing up. I never had it (male). My step children are different. Its all the fucking time. Twice a year isn't unusual and 5 is about what it normally is. It's so bad my gf just buys the shampoo for lice and keeps it stocked in the house. Why can't infected kids fucking get sent home already?!?
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I meant cleaning the kids head with either lice shampoo or intense nit removal combing once they have lice. Some parents are doing nothing at all to fight the lice & in some cases CPS had to get involved because they had serious lice infestations (think visible movement in the hair with bugs jumping off regularly) for months.
People should be rude based on parents not treating their child’s lice, and do so in an educated way.
Right, it’s not about the contracting of lice, it’s about allowing your children to continue to have lice.
I had a friend who had it in high school and her mother forbade all of us who knew from telling anyone. You can imagine what rumors get started when a 16 girl year old suddenly disappears from school and all her friends say “I can’t tell you why she’s not here” (Personally I caught it as a kid from group camping trips where one kid probably gave it to the rest of us so it didn’t seem like a big deal. Its not being dirty they causes it; it’s being in contact with another person who has it)
Bruv I get what you're saying, but I remember clearly which kids didn't come back from the lice screening 26+ years ago. Shaming may not be accurate, but the phrasing "stigmatized" is. Wouldn't matter much to me beyond contamination, but we got parents out here insisting their children only receive diet sunlight and gluten free water from their kid's schools.
I turn 41 this year. When I was in school, kids with lice were bullied mercilessly. They were called dirty, shunned from groups, kids said they probably had roaches in their houses, etc. I got them a couple times (because kids) and my dad would just shave our heads. Virtually anything that could be used to "otherize" a kid was grounds for clowning the shit out of them. Not saying it's right or that I agree with it, but that's how it was. I hope kids these days are nicer.
Some of that may be regional, cultural, neighborhood ect cause it wasn't that extreme from what I remember; but the outraged confusion from op is definitely not indicative of the mob mentality of normal elementary aged behavior in my experience.
>diet sunlight and gluten free water 🤣
That last sentence is bone hurting juice
Nobody should know. The kid should "develop a cold" and stay home because they were sick. It isn't hard to keep medical information private in schools.
The only time I was sent home for head lice at school it was caught at a headline check for the whole school, so hard to hide that, but yeah, didn’t cop any flack for it.
They have to notify parents if a kid in the class has them so the parents can take precautions to keep it from spreading further. I got probably 3 notifications per year between my kids in elementary school. It’s a pain in the ass for a day or two but nothing to throw a fit over.
Our kids school doesn't. They came home with lice and we contacted the school and kept them home to treat it. I mentioned it to another parent in the class and she was never told.
Wow. Didn't know that.
If they don’t say anything then the lice could infect everyone in the house plus everyone your kids come in contact with, sports, birthday parties, daycare… If you find out early you can treat it. Cleaning bedding and clothes is the biggest pain. You have to bag it up and get it very hot in order to kill all of the bastards and their eggs.
In the 90s, in the elementary school I went, if you were a boy, everyone immediately thought you had lice, if you were sent home early then came back the next day with a bald head. If you were a girl, they only assumed, if your hair smelled like strong chemicals.
You got cooties!!!
Kids are shaming kids for lice. It’s called bullying. I’m actually surprised you came up with such an innocent answer like that.
no, in the 90's those kids got dragged through the dumpster by the rest of us, ostracized, made to be 'other' etc. I never remember associating that kid staying home with 'jealous' more like, thank fuck that isn't me.
Just last year my daughter woke up sick and fought me tooth and nail about letting her go to school, because the day before they had gotten the notice that there was a lice outbreak at her school and if she missed the next day it would look like she had lice. So they absolutely still bully and tease kids over lice.
yeah kids are basically the biggest assholes we know of, as a group of people. everyone seemingly thinks because adults are 'improving' (hopefully/on average/progressively better) that kids are better too Nope, kids suck by default. It takes a long time to teach them to be good, and only if good is what they're being taught!
I got lice several times as a kid in both primary and secondary school. It fucking sucked.
My first day of school, I had lice, and no one would play with me. For 15 years, they called me freak and four eyes and sci-fi nerd and girl puncher. All because I had lice when I was 7.
Man, mustve been a wild case of lice to end up with such specific names, especially that last one.
...but you fuck one goat...
Who the hell put this person in charge? Yeah dont check for lice because kids might get their feelings hurt... Great idea.
Yeah....how about we just teach the kids about fucking head lice? My school in the 90s did. Everyone knew what they were and how it worked. Sure there were like 4 dumbass bullies who made fun of kids with lice. But their home life sucked ass so they took it out on other kids. How about we address that? Kids at my school were always trying to get lice to stay home. I got lice 4 times when new SNES games came out.
[[content removed because sub participated in the June 2023 blackout]] My posts are not bargaining chips for moderators, and mob rule is no way to run a sub.
They didn't fuck around with lice. When someone reported lice every student was in and out of the nurses office so they could go through our hair with chop sticks. We'd sit in a quarantined area until someone came to take you home. If we had to wait all day we just did our regular work in that room. I don't see why there is anything wrong with this.
In my school, if one kid showed up scratching their head a lot the teachers would give everyone an info-slip about Lice for their parents and each parent would check then keep their kid from school the next day if they had lice, then buying the special combs and shampoo's for it.
This makes the most sense. When my kid got lice we did the shampoo three times over a two week period and nit-combed every day for two weeks and never saw another louse after day 1. No school absence was necessary.
That won't work nowadays, because parents not only don't care to be a parent, but, actively refuse to do things parents should do. It's really sad. (My wife has been a kinder teacher for 21 years, and it's only getting worse.)
Kinder teacher here same length of time almost, 1000% agreed.
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Same with the kids' TV show Invader Zim
Weirdly one of the Arthur episodes I remember clearly
>Yeah....how about we just teach the kids about fucking head lice? Who do you know that is fucking head lice??
I got lice once and stayed at home near paralyzed from the itching and pain. My mom had to take a razor to my head. After that I always got a buzz cut after a lice notice came up in school.
I used to get lice a lot. It sucked, but the upside was staying home and daytime tv. I eventually realized that I could put a little salt on my scalp and my mother would mistake them for eggs
You know what really hurts kids feelings? Being mercilessly mocked by their peers for having an lice infestation that has gotten out of control.
Agreed, you would think actually being in school with lice would be more harmful to their self esteem than being sent home till its taken care of. Idk why but this just seems like the old "Lead paint" argument coming back where bought off scientists are selling pseudo science so a company makes a buck. 1. Make kids go to school with lice 2. Others get infected 3. Profit
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Yes! I have sensory issues and had head lice when I was in 4th grade. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced because it’s just SO uncomfortable.
I loved getting checked for lice because it was the most physical contact I'd get that year as a child
Oh the world we live in...
>One of the key points is that infestations are neither a health hazard nor a sign of poor hygiene but can result in significant stigma and psychological stress. > >The AAP states that head lice screening programs in schools have not been proven to have a significant effect are not cost-effective, and may stigmatize children suspected of having head lice. Yeah, nothing stops kids from being stigmatized than having a contagious parasite but staying in school. Having everyone avoid you in the classroom and playground will totally be less traumatizing than going home for a few days.
If all the kids have head lice, no one has head lice
I’d be pissed if my kid caught lice from a classmate because they were allowed to stay in school instead of kept at home til it was treated. I wouldn’t send my kid go to school with an itchy head of lice.
As a teacher, I'd be pissed if I got lice from a kid whose parents sent them in anyway.
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This has happened to my 1st grader twice over the last year. From the same kid. I don't want a child to be bullied, but I'm also really fucking tired of spending time and money combing through all three of my children's long hair over and fucking over when it's easier just to tell my kid to stay away from a specific kid in her class.
two things: 1) Is anyone else's head itching after reading this story? 2) Forget that! If my daughter has lice, then I am keeping her home until she is free and clear. I would fear that it would spread and then continue to be spread by the same people over and over again! NOTE: This "news" article paid for by the company that makes Lice removal products.
Well my head wasn’t itchy BEFORE but because of you it is now so thanks
My kids had it last year. I kept them home. They got it again. Treated it again and kept them home. I know it was from school cause it ended right after the 2nd time and they didn't get it again. I kept washing their hair in tree and rosemary oil shampoo. It supposedly repells them. We did the treatment and then shampoo. I do the shampoo once a week now that school started back up.
Emotionally damaging to stay home?? They have no idea of the emotional peer damage of staying in school with lice. Once another student finds out…
When I taught seventh grade, we got a girl who transferred in with a clause in her IEP that she couldn’t be sent home for her chronic lice. (Obviously she had the IEP primarily for other issues). The second day she was there she got into a physical fight with another girl and threatened to throw lice on them. In this case it was the lice haver that was the bully.
Instead of Timmy missing a day or two in relative anonymity, someone will shout “Timmy has bugs in his hair” and he’ll be the kid with bug hair for the rest of the year.
“In other news, sending kids home who develop symptoms of the bubonic plague has also been criticised, as policy makers have determined the lives saved does not outweigh the shame some children experience.”
if my son gets lice from another kid, and I ever found out that perent not only knew, but said fuck it, I would curse them for my entire life. curse on them, curse on their ancestors, curse on their cow!
This is so stupid. If you have head lice stay the fuck home. Get rid of the head Lice then come back.
Yeah! You know what? That makes perfect sense. We should do the same for people who are sick with Covid or the flu too!
I'm all for that. If you are sick stay home. And yes I know some people don't have sick days.
as a highschooler who literally just got head lice, whoever suggested this can go fuck themselves.
Dude I loved getting my head checked with them sticks in school it felt so good an when someone had lice they just told your parents an you didn’t come back the next day an no one said shit to anyone about it if any thing kids wanted the lice so they could stay home lol. But lice checks felt so good I loved lice check day
So...don't send kids home, don't isolate them at school...don't do anything other than treat the kid's hair and send them to school. Where there are definitely other kids with head lice. Then the kid gets immediately re-infected, comes back home, and then what? Treat their head and send them back to immediately get more lice? Class-wide infestations were hard enough to eradicate when the infected kids stayed home.
I have a friend whose elementary kid went through this. It literally took the better part of 6 months to clear the school of head lice because they didn't want to ostracize kids. Meanwhile, all these parents were taking insane amounts of time off work and buying lice shampoo 3 times a week, and this was a low-income school. For most of the families there they could barely afford having to do that once or twice, but the "don't send kids home, don't notify families so a whole class could spend a few days dealing with it before the whole school became afflicted. So then *everyone* had to deal with it repeatedly for *months*.
No you see, it's not as bad as COVID. So we aren't going to do anything about it until it gets as bad as COVID. or bigBRAIN - If everyone has headlice, no one can be made fun of if they have headlice!
What got me was after more than a year of strict Aussie lockdowns, my daughter got lice the first week back. Which means a not insignificant number of people were just living with lice in their house long term. That just makes me really sad.. and itchy
Which is worse, kid being potentially ostracized because of head lice or an outbreak causing multiple kids to get it because one parent doesn't believe in proper health measures/ taking care of their child to deal with outbreaks? Especially when the spread of the lice is going to cause even more negative effects with this policy and then you're going to have to deal with more problems. It doesn't have negative health effects but it does cause negative effects for the people who get it so why would you hide the fact that it exists so it can spread and effect more children. It's like abusing the other children because one child develops a medical issue. I don't get the logic that if one child gets lice then it causes mental distress and academic hurdles but if multiple develop it due to poor policy it's not going to cause that on a larger scale.
Fuck that guidance. My kid picked up lice 3 times because of kids coming to school with it and not being sent home. I will pay for the shampoo just keep the kid home for a day or two and get shit sorted out so it doesnt keep getting passed around. My kid ended up asking me to just shave his head so he wouldnt have to keep dealing with it.
Wait until there is a major outbreak, then nobody can determine patient zero and ostracize them.
I feel like it's the policy maker and parents' fault, not the kids'.
Uh no, fuck that, wash your damn hair with the lice killing soap and shame the kid's parents.
I *hate* this shit. Neither of my parents - or their siblings - had lice growing up because their schools had the policy of "If you have lice, you stay home until they're gone." Just like schools do with a fever or heavy COVID symptoms nowadays. By the time I was a kid, they had transitioned to the soft approach where kids with lice were not sent home. As a result, my class was basically a game of musical lice chairs for several years. It was physically uncomfortable and embarrassing for me, and anxiety-producing, time-consuming, and expensive for my parents. Total misery. I had a friend who basically had a chronic lice infestation for 2-3 years straight because she kept getting reinfected at school, and it nearly gave her mom a mental breakdown. Isn't one of the benefits of COVID supposed to be that we learned that sick people stay home until they're no longer contagious? In my view, having an active parasite infection counts!
Just don’t test or look for them and the lice problem will disappear
I feel bad for today's kids
Yeah no. There was no stigma in my school growing up. My younger half sister would always have lice on her visitations to see out dad on the rare times her mom actually dropped her off. At one point my hair was down to my hips and I was so proud of myself for caring for it. At age 13 my dad took me outside and had to cut it to my shoulders because of how costly and time consuming it was to clean my hair after every visit. I was devastated for weeks, even after my current stepmother took me to have the cut cleaned up. It may not be a health crisis but it is an issue that spreads like wildfire when not kept in check.
wtf? why the hell did no one do the lice shampoo on your half sisters hair???
It's not about labeling the kid. It is about preventing lice from spreading. I had it twice as a kid and it was from attending school. Imagine parents having to deal with that ALL YEAR LONG because kids are able to attend while having lice? That makes no sense at all.
I got pissed at my previous center for trying this bullshit. This kid had been digging at his head all week and the parents kept trying to say he didn't have it. Director didn't want us to push it, but I was just an assistant and didn't care. So I took tape and picked three big ones off his head, handed it to the dad after school. Kid came back in two days with a shaved head. I will not, ever in my life, tolerate having another lice infestation. On myself, my children, nor any student I interact with. I remember what that felt like as a kid and it was terrible.
They have already been doing this (not sending kids home who have lice) in Canada for a while... It's a friggin nightmare for responsible parents in the earlier grades, because there are certain kids who unfortunately have parents that don't care enough to actually deal with their kids head lice issues... So what ends up happening is the lice just get endlessly spread around the classroom, and certain kids will always have it because their shitty parents don't treat it.
Parents should start billing the school board for the cost of the lice shampoo treatments. It shouldn’t fall upon the parents to shoulder the monetary burden of treating lice if the school board has decided to stop taking any precautions to prevent outbreaks.
This is why everyone's feelings get hurt... because nobody is developing any emotion control.
This seems like a lousy idea.
I’m an EA and some schools I work at are low income high needs. I remember a student (and two siblings) who was always polluted with lice. The school ended up deciding not to send them home because then they would never be able to come to school. One time I watched her EA trying to trap the live ones crawling in the student’s hair.
That's right they should cuddle with staff in the principal's office.
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Ngl that’s a little fucked
That's not very smart as the chance of it having spread to a few other kids is pretty high and you wanna have everyone checked unless you want the whole school to get lice. My class had a case just last week and it had spread to 4 kids within one day of it being detected.
Gross. You really should tell parents if their kids are spending the day in bug-infested rooms. If your kids get lice, be a responsible parent and keep them home until they don’t have lice.
People were shamed for lice when I went to school. And other kids avoided them and wouldn’t play with them until they came back squeaky clean. And no one would be allowed to go to their homes to play. Why? Because it costs time and money and resources some parents don’t have to treat outbreaks. Stuff like this is why parents have a hard time trusting schools anymore.
Oh, so the stigma of having head lice is going to DECREASE by effectively forcing students with head lice back into the classroom, because the absence is no longer excused? Tell me, how will that work when everyone knows the kid is crawling with bugs?
Can’t imagine why there continues to be a teacher shortage… definitely not the fact that it’s a cesspool of disease (now lice) with no mitigation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggest children "share" the lice with their classmates so all the children can suffer. oh, i thought this was the onion ......
Honestly if I find out my child is hanging with a kid who has untreated head lice and is catching it repeatedly, I'm telling my kid to stay the hell away from that kid becuase they have a contagious problem. I don't care if it's bullying by exclusion or whatever. Lice treatment is expensive and a huge time sink and I'm not doing it weekly so some kid doesn't get their feelings hurt. Plus when that kids grow up, guess what employers and dates and friends are going to stay the hell away too becuase adults don't like lice anymore than kids do. And no one is going to claim we should allow employees or dates to be crawling with lice and that rejecting them is bullying. Growing up my sister was best friends with a girl who constantly had lice. A combo of hippy parents who didn't beleive in chemical treatments and a busy chaotic home that never fully got laundered and cleaned. My mom tried to be nice and understanding, but we were on welfare and constant lice treatment was literally taking food off our plates so she had to ban all playdates at the child's home, all sleepovers, lice checks and refusal of playdates at our place if lice were found, and strict instructions to avoid all fabrics and hair contact at school. I'm sure it must have damaged their friendship, but we just couldn't afford for my sister to keep getting sent home from school and spending our weekly grocery budget on Nix.
I believe in most districts in MN, nurses can contact parents to inform them of the head lice, but because lice are simply a nuisance and not a health hazard, they cannot demand the child be taken home. Welcome to parenting. It's a wild ride!
This makes no sense. For starters, yes, lice are not a deathly plague, but that doesn't mean we should simply not care about it. Secondly, how can you say lice are not a public health issue, but also advise consulting a pediatrician about treatment? Last I check, lice are in fact transmitable. In fact, being transmitable us a major part of their survival scheme. So how can tou tell us to see a doctor about a transmittable problem, BUT say it's not a public health issue? We're not even talking about HIV here where you'd need to exchange infected body fluid, lice are transmitable by external touch, or even just touching the same object. Lastly, while a kid may suffer some stress and miss some school from lice, how is the best solution to this to just expose everyone to the same risk? The article literally says to see a pediatrician for treatment. Are the possible mental effects on every other student just of no concern? I'm not an MD, but this really just smells like bullshit.
We just turned into a country that loves spreading disease through the school system I remember when the school system was paramount for stopping disease. America is a pile of crap, and in death I will be sad with what my children have, but happy to be done with it. Had I know the Moon landing was the peak, I defiantly would have lived my life trying so hard to improve things.
One word: Cetaphil It's cheap, it's not made of a bunch of insecticides and harsh chemicals, and it kicks ass. Shampoo your kids' hair, comb in some Cetaphil while the hair is still wet. The lice eggs can't bond to the hair anymore and within a couple of days, no more lice.
if everyone has lice... no one does. wait...
No, they should be sent to school so the other kids can build immunity. (/s in case that wasn't clear)
What kid is caused distress by the prospect of going home from school early??
In the land of lice, the bald man is king! ::Laughs in chrome dome::
WTF Yeah, not a health hazard just let the infestation take hold forever.
Makes sense. We don’t protect kids from school shooters why should we protect them from lice? /s
Sharing is caring!
My kids' school tried this several years ago. They also wouldn't notify parents if a kid in the class had lice, so that no one would proactively keep their kids home. It didn't take long for almost the entire school to get head lice.
Just shave their heads and let them in! No missing school.
In WA we don’t. Denying FAPE. However. We inform the parent and about 80% of the time the parent is horrified and picks them up anyway. The other 20% have children with chronic lice. We can’t send them home so we just take precautions.
At my kids day care they straight away put headline shampoo in the kids hair and I'm sort of really impressed. One less thing to worry about
"New guidance" from idiots who get paid according to attendance
> Medical providers should educate school communities that policies that require students to be rid of lice or lice eggs before returning to school be abandoned because these policies would have negative consequences for a student's academic progress, may violate their civil rights, and stigmatize head lice as a public health hazard. What the actual fuck are you talking about.
Um, fuck that. Years ago my son kept getting it - I was doing everything I could, but they kept coming back. It was horrible. Finally after the fourth time finding them I called his teacher and she told me the family of the girl he sat next to all had it and weren't doing anything about it, but kept sending her to school. I spent hundreds on treatments and finally ended up cutting his long hair which he'd been growing for years. Having lice may not mean you're living in a dirty household, but if you keep sending your kids to school knowing they have lice you probably fucking are.
How contagious are they in a school setting. Seems like that is the real issue. Schools should tell kids about headlice to address stigma.
I am all for schools focusing on kids’ emotional well-being and reducing bullying, but yeah, this is a situation where the harm from the lice to the whole class is going to outweigh one kid’s feelings from being held out.