head lice are really uncomfortable to see. i think most parents go through this at some point with their kids going to school and the only way to find it is to really look very closely at your child's scalp. so in school it's very hard for these children not to have contact with each other share brushes hats scarves and that's really how it's spread. so as much as possible if you can instruct your kid not to share these products with their friends that would be a great start and a great way to prevent it. but beyond that you just have to examine your child's scalp very closely. what you will typically find rather than the active lice is nits. what nits look like they really look like flakes of dandruff except that when you try to remove it it won't come off the hair because what the lice do the nits are the eggs from the lice that will hatch within a week or so so what the lice do is they create this little capsule and they glue it to the hair and that's how it sticks. so it's very hard to take it off. the problem is i have parents come in and they say well but my child would shampoo their scalp everyday. and that makes it worse because when the hair is that clean the glue sticks better. so you are almost better off having a greasy scalp because it's harder for that nit to stick to the scalp. so it's not a matter of cleanliness at all. but once those nits are attached to the scalp you really have to get a prescription treatment to help get rid of it. there is a prescription called ovide that you put on to the scalp leave it on for a few hours and then shampoo it out and repeat it in a week to get rid of any nits that might have hatched by then.
how can i tell if my child has head lice and what do they look like?