Where school life plays the role of a backbone in your child’s career, it may also affect the health of your child by infesting his/her hair with head lice. A louse is a tiny insect with six legs and the size of a sesame seed. It feeds on the blood and keeps moving about. It is really hard to see and find it moving through the hair. Its eggs, called nits, get glued onto hairs near the scalp and remain static.
Both head lice and their nits must be killed for the proper health care of your child. We have remarkable suggestions in this regard but first, we will like to tell you some interesting facts about what nits are.
These facts will help you kill them properly. Here we go.
Some fast facts about nits
Nits need as well as love warmth; so you often find them about 0.5 cm from the scalp, at the nape of the neck and around the ears. A louse cements its egg sack to the hair shaft which is why nits get stuck to the hair.
The color of a nit predicts its status. If it is brown, it is about to hatch and if white, it has already hatched and is empty now. These empty egg cases are found 1 cm from the scalp. Off the scalp, it is not possible for the nits to survive over 2 weeks whereas lice can survive only 24 hours.
Usually, head lice live on a human host for about 30 days. 3 to 5 nits are laid by a female louse daily and it takes 7 to 10 days for the nits to hatch. Almost after a weak, the female louse gets mature to lay her own eggs.
How to remove the nits from your child’s hair?
The only way to remove nits from your child’s hair is to remove them physically with a fine quality nit comb. Using chemicals or other antiseptics does not do the trick appreciably. So, a fine-tooth plastic or stainless steel comb is enough to work miraculously in this regard. The following steps will guide you how to handle the task sensibly and effectively.
- Apply a suitable conditioner to your child’s hair to make them smooth enough to be combed through every strand. If you select a white-colored conditioner, it will make it easy for you to see the lice on the comb.
- The best way to comb out the nits is to deal with hair in sections. Starting from one side of the head around the ear and moving to the other end section by section will comb out all the nits successfully.
- Always move the comb slowly and deeply from the scalp down to the end of the complete hair length.
- After each attempt, remember to clean the comb with a tissue to go in again.
- Keep combing the same section of the hair again and again until you get a clean comb.
- Keep repeating the same treatment with all the sections till you get all of your child’s hair neat and clear of the nits.
