The 5 Stages of Lice: A Mother's Journey

Like many Prospect Heights families with school-age kids, my family has battled with head lice in recent months. What we’ve been through is a process that could be termed the Five Stages of Lice: shock, shame, self-education, self-treatment and throwing-money-at-the-problem.

What has struck me above all in this process is how important it is for parents and schools to be open with each other and share information. Terrible though the first realization that critters are in your child’s hair may be, lice are not actually a health hazard. According to the Centers for Disease Control, they don’t transmit disease, and infestations are nothing to do with a family’s level of hygiene.

However, most people experience a degree of shame and discomfort around the topic of lice that can discourage candor and pooling of resources. So a cycle sets in whereby the lice are never effectively dealt with and return and return and return.

This month my son’s school, , invited Licebusters NYC to carry out lice checks in all its early childhood classes. I knew of Licebusters, run by local quasi-celebrity Dalya H., aka “the Brooklyn Lice Lady,” because in desperation (Stage 5) I had paid a hefty fee to be treated by her. Dalya uses a conditioner-and-comb-through method garnished with generous sprinklings of baking soda: her expert combing technique practically guarantees the removal of all lice and nits. (In fact she promised to buy me a new house if mine reappeared.)

When I asked P.S. 9’s principal, Sandra D’Avilar, if I could drop by at Dalya’s lice-checks I anticipated a little wariness. Most area schools have lice; few like to discuss it. But Ms D’Avilar was very open, arguing that it’s important for everyone to be informed. 

Dalya arrived at P.S. 9 with three assistants who set up chairs in the nurse’s office and inspected children four at a time. She chatted to me while working, cheerfully opining that lice are a “compliment, they only come to clean people.” When I asked if she has a peak time of year, she said that September is her busiest month as kids return from sleepaway camp with lice.

Slumber parties are another culprit: “Sleepovers are the best for my business,” she said. Because lice do not fly or hop, they need an extended opportunity to climb from one head to another, which side-by-side sleeping provides.

According to Dayla, lice are everywhere – from the most prestigious private schools to the humbler neighborhood schools; from preschool to high school. What’s important, she says, is how a school deals with lice infestations: “The schools that don’t check are covered with lice.”

Few statistics are available, but a 2007 New York City Department of Education memo noted that "lice are rarely present in more than 5% of students." 

My first awareness of a lice problem in my son’s first-grade class came in the fall, when one brave parent sent an email to the whole class explaining his child’s absence from school. I inspected both my children but found nothing. It wasn’t until a little while later that I noticed my son scratching his head more than usual. Again, nothing was visible in anyone’s hair but as the scratching seemed to spread quickly to me and my daughter I rushed out to buy a chemical shampoo and lice comb and treated us all. Then I laundered just about everything in our apartment.

In the following weeks, one or two other parents emailed to alert us that they’d found nits or lice. Our scratching ended and then began again. And I, like all the affected parents, embarked on a private odyssey of research, reading everything I could find on the Internet about lice. My reluctance to repeatedly douse both children with chemicals (none of which, as the CDC puts it, are completely “ovicidal”— i.e., they don’t kill the nits), led me to the conditioner-plus-combing route. I bought a special comb, a type of shampoo that claims to loosen the nits previous to combing, and tea tree oil.

For periods of time my family seemed lice-free; then someone would start to scratch again. I’d treat everyone and climb my personal Everest of laundry and the whole cycle would start over. One day I eventually broke down and asked a friend for Dalya’s number.

Paying an expert is not the end of the story; without regular comb-throughs lice may always re-infest a household. However in my case I found myself brimming with information after my visit to Dalya that I couldn’t wait to share with friends at the playground. A lively conversation sparked up at the Underhill that continued on email and now — months after that first conscientious email broaching the issue — there’s a relaxed and informative dialogue going on among parents that, as long as the lice are bugging us, can only be a good thing.

I'm glad P.S. 9 has called in Licebusters. Let's just hope we can all forget about it before long.