I know the talk of head lice makes my own skin crawl so I am sure it’s not the most fun topic to discuss, but when you have children that are in school, anything is possible. For me, it was two different times that head lice happened upon my house due to my first born and it was rough. When my daughter was 2 years old she ended up with head lice, I have no clue how nor where & recall being thankful I used a lot of hair junk back then because I never got head lice even though I shared a bed with her.

I went through all of the chemicals that they have out there, I followed every single possible step one would think of and should do when head lice falls upon their household child(ren), but it would not go away. After missing nearly two weeks of work {I worked outside of the home back then} because my daughter wasn’t’ able to go to daycare until the head lice was completely gone, I finally was told to try mayonnaise.

I was reminded of this story when I happened to read a blog post recently discussing mayonnaise as a hair treatment method for dry, cracked, dead hair. The messed up thing was that mayonnaise actually worked to remove head lice from my daughter’s hair, this was of course after I spent crazy amounts of money on all of the chemicals and house treatments one could think of and had missed tons of time at the office which meant spending money I wasn’t’ earning due to work hours lost.  Need I mention I was a single mom back then? Yeah, it sucked all around.

Years later when my daughter came home on the last day of school with head lice, I freaked out! Seriously, these buggers give me chills and I was so thankful that she didn’t get it all year that coming home on the last day of school with it upset me to my core and upset her too. My daughter has LONG hair so it took hours upon hours to comb through her hair and using mayonnaise worked this time but you still have to comb out the eggs or what not. It took so long to get the lice out of her head this time around and it made the first part of her Summer vacation suck. I remember getting so frustrated at her father, because she would still do all of her visits with him & I would worry that he wasn’t cleaning up his house in the most thorough way. Life stops when your child has head lice, I don’t’ care what anyone else says, the life I know stopped. Beds were cleaned out, sprayed, pillows replaced, stuffed animals locked up in air tight plastic bags, the whole nine yards. I even treated my hair with her, even though no lice were found in my head just to make her feel less alone in the fight against head lice.

I don’t recall how long it took to get rid of the lice and all the eggs in her hair this time around but I do know that putting mayonnaise on her hair with saran wrap over it tight for a night really killed the live lice almost 100% in one time treatment.  Another thing I found out during this time of her having head lice was that if you put vinegar on your hair, like using a spray bottle – the lice go nuts. I use this vinegar in a spray bottle on my hair and my daughter’s hair anytime our heads feel itchy because the lice go running. Knock on wood we haven’t had a lice outbreak in a long time and I am so not ready to have it again.

The joys of childhood, note that I went to the same elementary school my kids go to and back then head lice was bad in the school too, apparently my sister and I got it all of the time, that’s according to my parents, but I don’t remember my elementary years much.