Mom Says Daughter Repeatedly Gets Infected With Head Lice Because Of One Classmate Who Spreads Them
There's sympathy to be had for both sides here.
Samo Trebizan / Shutterstock Dealing with conflicts at school can be complicated. Parents struggle to piece together the full story, and children are often too young to handle problems themselves. This is especially true when it comes to personal issues, like head lice.
One mom is in this exact situation, stuck wondering what to do when her daughter has been repeatedly infected with head lice from the same student at school.
The parent is upset that her daughter is chronically contracting head lice from another student.
The anonymous mother took to Reddit to ask for advice. She stated that her 5-year-old daughter has had a problem with catching lice since the beginning of the school year. For the last five weeks, she has gotten them every week.
"My daughter has come home from school with nits, headlice, whatever you want to call them... again," the mother wrote. “It’s constant and I’ve had enough!”
In her post, the mom claimed she knows “who the culprit is” — the girl her daughter sits next to in class. “The child is just left to scratch and spread,” she complained.
The woman attempted to rectify the situation as best she could. She asked for her daughter to be moved to a new seat, but the school stated it’s “not fair to single out the child” and "someone has to sit next to them." She also tried keeping her daughter home from school, but the school threatened to report her to social services.
According to the mother, the school said all they can do is “send out a general letter about an ‘outbreak.’” She tried to talk with the child’s parents, but she claimed that “the girl seems to be picked up by a childcare provider. No one seems to actually know who the parents are.”
The mom insisted she is not the only one “frustrated at the constant head lice,” but she is “the most angry” as it is affecting her child the most.
She is understandably fed up with the nonstop lice, and the constant efforts she must take to combat it. Her daughter "always has clean and tidy hair, that's tightly plaited in some sort of fashion," the mom explained. “I run the combs through as a precaution weekly. And don’t even get me started [on] how expensive it is to constantly be treating my child’s hair.”
Comments on the Reddit post ranged from advice on what products to use to suggesting the mother report the school for allowing a case of child neglect to slip through the cracks. One Redditor suggested she “contact child protection and inform them of a child in your daughter’s class who is clearly a victim of negligence with a contagious, untreated medical condition.”
Head lice are extremely hard to get rid of.
According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, lice have become resistant to the ingredients in shampoos and other treatments that are traditionally used, making them difficult to do away with. They recommend seeing a doctor to discuss prescription treatment options. The Association also stated that specific combing techniques can kill the lice.
Because of the difficulty of eliminating lice, it is certainly understandable why this mother is so upset. She has had to deal with removing lice from her daughter’s hair continuously and it is easy to feel sympathy for her.
However, there is also sympathy to be felt for the other child, who is also constantly dealing with lice. And, while it may be easy to judge her parents, it’s also possible that they are in the exact same situation as the complaining mother, just trying to help their daughter with an uncomfortable and unfortunate problem. It’s very possible that no one is truly in the wrong here.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.