South Bay Parenting: A simple comb is the best weapon against head lice

My house is clean and generally presentable. I bathe my children regularly using soap and vigorous scrubbing. We wear freshly laundered clothes. We are not filthy people.

Which makes this next part hard for me to confess: My kid got lice. Full on, bugs in the hair. Dozens of tiny eggs. Living, breathing pests taking up residence in his fine blond strands.

Few moms would admit to such a scourge on her family but I refuse to be ashamed. Rather than hiding away my son’s infestation, I’m telling the world, which is what all moms should do lest our kids continue to trade lice back and forth to the tune of 6 million to 12 million cases a year.

If I sound clear-headed now, that’s thanks to a Lomita nurse with a passion for lice education. Logan Steiner, founder of NitNix, has made lice her singular health focus. A registered nurse and midwife, she offers educational seminars to parents, volunteers to manage outbreaks in low-income schools and has even patented her own NittyKid lice comb.

I never imagined I’d need someone like Logan until the night I noticed a tiny brown speck in my son’s hair while toweling him off after a bath. I fished it out. It was alive. Trying not to panic, I searched the rest of his hair and discovered dozens of nits, some of them hatched and moving.

I’m not proud of what happened next.

My son went back in the tub while my husband ran out to buy the most lethal concoction of anti-lice chemicals you can get over the counter. Then I made my poor boy sit in the toxic sludge while I shoved every bedsheet, towel and piece of clothing into the wash at screaming hot temperatures. More poison went onto his car seat, batting helmet and book bag.

My son, the amateur entomologist, was ecstatic to have bugs in his hair. But that night, I couldn’t sleep, picturing his head crawling with stubborn pests that would soon claim the whole house.

The next day I called Logan.

She assured me that lice don’t jump or fly or crawl around looking for the next victim. They don’t even live more than two days off the human head so I didn’t need to wash every scrap of clothing he owned. And she was dismayed that I’d doused my son and half the neighborhood in toxic chemicals. She warned me not to do anything else until she got there.

A few hours later, Logan arrived on our doorstep. No hazmat suit. Not even a hair net. She told me I’d never again need to subject my son to noxious pesticides. All I needed was a comb. That’s it. To get rid of lice, she said, comb them out.

I was skeptical. But then she took out her patented lice comb and started running it through my kid’s hair — no meticulous segmentation or fancy strokes — just normal combing. And 45 minutes later, the lice were out. Later I learned that almost every leading health expert recommends combing over anti-lice shampoo for getting rid of the bugs.

Logan isn’t interested in repeat customers, so she implores parents to get proactive about lice management. If only parents combed out their kids once in a while — after lice-prone events like camp and sleepovers and then every four to six weeks or so — she wouldn’t spend so much time responding to panicked house calls. Instead, parents wait for school notices to start the process. Regular combing would catch the louse before it lays eggs, sparing everyone heartache.

I took the comb and pledged to do my part.

If there’s a next time, I’ll know just what to do, and that gives me confidence. I will no longer be cowed by these hair-clinging pests. I will be empowered and vigilant. Moms of the world, stand with me.

Let us comb.

Renee Moilanen is a freelance writer based in Redondo Beach.

Credit : Daily Breeze

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