Unfortunately, I've become a lice expert. Never having had lice as a child, I learned as a mom how complicated and labor intensive removing those little bugs can be.
The first thing to do is establish if your child (or you) actually has lice. Don't use the special shampoo unless you actually see lice (bugs). It doesn't work on the eggs and you aren't supposed to use it more than once every 10 days. If you use it before you have actual lice, then you will be using it again when the eggs hatch and that's not good for little children's heads.
1) Check for lice by getting under a good light and going through the hair strand by strand (plan on taking an hour for short hair and several hours for long hair) looking for lice (bugs) or eggs (nits). The bugs look like bugs. You can google them and look at pictures, but if you find any bugs at all - assume they are lice and treat as such. The eggs look like little dandruff flakes, but they stick to the hair, you can't brush them away with your fingers.
2) If you find eggs, clip out the strand of hair with toe nail clippers and put the strand, with the egg attached, in a zip lock bag. It's better to clip out the hair than to try and remove the egg because the eggs stick to the hair and by the time you pull it loose, you could loose it in the rest of the hair. It's easier to clip out.
3) If you don't find any eggs, keep checking every day for 10 - 14 days. Check every strand of hair twice a day for eggs. The eggs are microscopic at first, so you have to keep checking so you can cut them out when they are big enough to see, but before they hatch. An hour or two a day for two weeks seems like a lot, but you want to get the eggs early and wipe things out fast.
4) Tea tree oil shampoo is a good preventative shampoo. The bugs can't climb on greasy, oily hair. So, if you use some tea tree oil shampoo that will help prevent a lice outbreak. Also, don't wash hair too often. Maybe once a week or once every 10 days.
5) Wash everything (clothes, bedding, etc.) in your house in the washing machine. And dry it. You need the heat to kill the eggs. I take everything out of every dresser and wash it all because you never know if an egg fell off a head into a drawer. Wash the floors. Vacuum the furniture and the interior of the car.
6) Anything that can't be washed or vacuumed, needs to be quarantined for two weeks. I section off a room of the house and fill it with stuffed animals, comforters, and furniture that I'm not able to clean. I leave it all in there for two weeks.
7) If you see actual lice, follow the same procedures, but use the the special lice shampoo and treatment gel. You can get it at any drug store. We've used Nix, Rid, and the Walgreens brand. Had similar results with each.
8) The shampoo has directions and so you can refer to that, but just be sure to keep up the checking for eggs. Once you kill the bugs with the shampoo, you'll want to get all those eggs by checking every day. Otherwise, you'll just keep repeating over and over.
9) If you can't get rid of the lice after a few rounds, you may want to consult a professional. There are services you can use that will come de-louse your child or your house. There are salons where you can take your child to have their head checked and the nits removed. These options are expensive, but you might find it worth the price.
10) There is also a prescription shampoo you can get from your pediatrician if none of the above works. It's really strong and they'll want you to try everything else first, but we had to use the prescription once. It's basically a liquid that smells like kerosene and has pages of warning information with it. You put it on for 8 - 10 hours and eventually you sort of get used to the smell. I guess it kills everything. It's pretty intense.
When we got to the pediatrician's office we were told they were having an emergency and that we'd have to wait. We waited in an exam room for 30 minutes. I cried most of the time. When the pediatrician came in, she said, "I know you won' t take this the wrong way, but you look worse than that emergency mom we just had."
Feel free to e-mail me if you need any help. It's labor intensive, but you can get rid of it in one sweep if you are really careful. On two occasions we were able to get rid of everything in one round.
Good luck.
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