10/08/2026
The email from school lands and your stomach drops. Take a breath — this one is far more fixable, and less dramatic, than its reputation.
Start here: your child does not need to miss school. The AAP is explicitly against "no-nit" policies. By the time lice are found, they've usually been on that head for weeks, and classroom spread is uncommon. Treat tonight, go back tomorrow.
And it says nothing about your housekeeping. Lice spread by direct head-to-head contact — play, sleepovers, selfies. They crawl; they cannot jump or fly, and they carry no disease. Clean hair is not protective and dirty hair is not the cause.
How to actually get rid of them:
• Find them properly. Bright light, a fine-toothed comb, wet hair, small sections behind the ears and at the neckline. Nits are glued on and won't brush away — that's how you tell them from dandruff.
• Treat on day 1. Permethrin 1% (Nix) or pyrethrin (RID). Regular shampoo, no conditioner (it blocks the medicine), towel-dry to damp, saturate from the neckline outward, 10 minutes, rinse.
• Treat again on day 9. This is the step people skip, and it's the reason lice come back.
• Comb the nits out of wet hair, section by section, between treatments.
Skip the house panic. Lice die in under 48 hours off a scalp. Wash what touched the head in the last two days on hot, bag what you can't wash for two weeks, soak brushes, vacuum. No sprays, no foggers — and skip the internet remedies. Mayonnaise, essential oils and kerosene are ineffective at best.
Check everyone in the house over the next two weeks. Call us if there are still live lice after two correct treatments, if your child is under two months, if the scalp looks red, crusted or painful, or if you just aren't sure what you're seeing — send us a photo.
Posts like this one come straight out of our Fig Tree parent guides — written by us, cited to the AAP and CDC, and updated as the evidence moves. Our members get the whole library, just for being members.
Evidence based. Fig Tree approved. We're here for you — reach out anytime.
📚 AAP Clinical Report 2022 · CDC
