You may have heard recently in the news that many schools all over the country, including here in Montgomery County, as well as the surrounding counties, are abandoning the “no-nit” policy. Basically, this means, that children are allowed to come back to school once they have been treated for lice, although they may have a few nits or eggs remaining in their hair. In past years, most schools, had in effect the “no-nit” policies where as children could not return to school until ALL nits were removed from the hair.
In our opinion, if you have nits, you still have lice. Schools have abandoned this policy stating that children were missing too much school, were being embarrassed by lice checks, and parents were being forced to miss work as well. What has happened is the lice is not being treated entirely, being spread more easily from child to child and therefore becoming more epidemic.
What needs to be done, is schools and lice educators need to set standards and establish guidelines and we need to educate and communicate effectively within schools and communities. There needs to be an emphasis on prevention and early detection. This can be easily done if everyone did routine screening and such routine screening can be done by a simple combing once a week.
Accurate identification is another widespread problem that we often have and thorough removal is right behind it. If everyone works together, this is the best way for us to keep our children in school and most of all, keep them nit- free and we can all work towards having a de-liceful year in school.
As the National Pediculosis Association says, “it’s not about the lice…it’s about the kids”.
As always,
Lauren Salzberg
lauren@potomaclicelady.com
