Every parent’s nightmare: head lice. Unfortunately, according to the CDC, this is a problem faced by the parents of approximately 6 to 12 million children ages 3 to 11 every year in the United States. If you’ve ever been the lucky parent of one of those children, you know all about the emotional rollercoaster that comes with facing a lice infestation. In fact, it kind of resembles the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief.
Denial
Your kid comes home from school armed with The Note—you know, the one that basically says, “Don’t you dare send your kid back to school until you take care of the tiny insects crawling around on their head.”
Your first response is simply "NO." It’s not possible—you bathe your children every night, you wash their sheets every week; how could this happen? It can’t happen. It’s not happening . So of course, you have to check for yourself. Once the impossible diagnosis is confirmed by seeing the nits in your child’s hair with your own two eyes, you move on to the next stage…
Anger
As you realize that this is indeed happening, you go into destroyer mode. But in order to destroy your enemy, you must first understand it. So, you research every possible thing you could ever know about these tiny life-disrupters.
You learn that even though contracting head lice doesn’t mean that you or your children are dirty, it does mean that you have to do A LOT of cleaning to ensure that when they are gone, they’re gone for good.
This cleaning includes washing all bedding, blankets, and clothing worn or touched by the lice-infested child, vacuuming every carpeted and upholstered surface in your home, and sealing all stuffed animals and other non-machine-washable items in a plastic bag for two days.
In theory, these tasks seem fairly simple. However, in reality, you spend three straight days vacuuming, doing laundry, and picking nits from your child’s hair until your fingers bleed. It doesn’t take long for you to decide, with unshakable conviction, that you HATE lice. You despise them with the burning passion of a thousand suns.
Bargaining
The $30 medicated shampoo that you bought and have been applying relentlessly to your child’s hair for the past week is not doing what it’s supposed to. You know this because your child (and probably yourself by this point) still has tiny insects living in their hair, mercilessly drinking blood from their scalp. You might find yourself actually trying to strike a deal with the shampoo. And with the lice. And maybe even with God.
“If this shampoo works, I swear I’ll do anything. I’ll be a better person. I’ll shave my own head if that’s what it takes. Just please, PLEASE get these lice out of my house.”
Depression
Of course, the shampoo doesn’t work. Just as you think you’ve beaten it, finally kicked every last louse out of your house, your daily examination of your kid’s hair proves otherwise. The lice are still alive and kicking, reproducing, and trying relentlessly to take over your life. And for a second, you think about letting them because you are just SO. TIRED.
Instead, you look up some home remedies, since the $30 shampoo was clearly useless. You find yourself sitting outside, combing mayonnaise through your child’s hair for three straight hours and suddenly you realize: your life has reached a new low. You actually think there is no possible way it could get any worse than this.
Acceptance
The good news is that once you hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up. And up you go. As your family finally proves to be head lice-free, you realize that life goes on and the whole debacle slowly becomes a thing of the past.
Once you finally have your house back, you are able to see that it could have been a lot worse. After all, head lice cannot kill, injure, or transmit diseases to you or your family. They are nothing more than a nuisance—disgusting, yes, but not dangerous. They have not caused irreparable damage (except maybe to your psyche). Everything is okay.
