A Lousy Idea?

The American Academy of Pediatrics released a new recommendation last week concerning the response to head lice in school-age children.  They want us to leave kids with head lice in the classrooms while their parents treat the condition at home. Apparently, lice don’t pose a serious enough risk to warrant missed school.

They’re right, of course. The worst thing about lice is that your head itches. That, and knowing that you have insects crawling around on your scalp. Other than that, it doesn’t get any worse. Strep throat, on the other hand, can get really bad. So can influenza, measles, chicken pox and the mumps. And unlike those afflictions, lice aren’t terribly contagious. They can be controlled with reasonable precautions.

So all in all, there’s no compelling medical reason to keep a kid home from school just because she has head lice. The cost of a missed day of school is more than the benefit of a day of quarantine. And besides, head lice cases are frequently over-diagnosed. At my school we send kids home if they have anything in their hair that even looks like lice at any stage of their life cycle.

That said, there’s no way this recommendation is going to fly. For three reasons.

First of all there’s the creep factor. Germs are one thing. All of us know we have germs, but we can’t see them, can’t feel them when they move, and most of us just aren’t that freaked about them. Lice are different. They’re actual insects, and knowing that there are insects; real, live, visible insects moving around on our heads is just too much to bear. The same goes for our kids. The American public is not ready to accept the possibility that their kids could bring lice home from school with no official intervention.

Which brings me to the second reason. Getting rid of lice is an expensive proposition, in terms of time and money. Bedding needs to be cleaned, along with coats, sweaters and hats. Special shampoo and medicine needs to be purchased and applied. Many families simply don’t have the capacity or the time to handle the situation.

Which brings me to the third reason. The Academy of Pediatrics has acknowledged that head lice have ceased to be a medical problem. They are no longer handled by the medical community. Schools, for all intents and purposes, are charged with the diagnosis of the condition as well as the prescription of the treatment. The Academy suggests that parents take over that entire role. Parents should regularly check their children’s heads, get rid of any lice they find and continue to send their kids to school in the meantime. The problem, of course, is that every parent has to actively participate. If this were Finland, Japan or some other mythical, fully-functional nation, that suggestion might be feasible. But this America. We can’t really count on one another for stuff like regular lice checks.

So this idea by the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well-intentioned and logical as it may be, simply won’t work. It’s a lousy idea.

3 thoughts on “A Lousy Idea?

  1. Kathy Wiebke

    I have not been in a classroom for a long time but I remember vividly the school nurse coming into the classroom to do head checks! I am not sure parents are going to buy into this one…as for me, my scalp just started to itch!

  2. Ben Talbert

    THis isn’t really a new reccomendation. The medicall community has been saying this for at least 15 years but because of the “creep factor” schools have been ignoring it. You’re right though, it isn’t a serious enough medical issue to warrant missing school but that hasn’t stopped untold numbers of teachers, nurses and administrators from sending the kids home.
    As to cost, none of the expensive stuff works and the effective rememdies are quite affordable. Baggint things for a 24 hours kills the lice. They can’t live without a host body longer than that. Theonly thing that gets them out is removing them and you have to really stay on it. There are useful combs that are cheap that help but you’re still going to spend a lot of time with an unhappy, antsy child pulling the bugs out.
    I had a child go through this once and it was terrible. The school thought they were going to keep her out but I wouldn’t stand for it. No one should.
    There’s a lo to f good web sites out there but I liked this one from Harvard as a starting point when I was battling it:
    http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/headlice.html

  3. organized chaos

    Our school district has already been following a policy close to this for the past 2 years. We can only send kids home if we see the actual live-bugs in their hair. Kids with egg-filled heads are fine to stay in school.
    It kills us- we are fighting an unending battle with lice. It’s everywhere- we’ve gotten rid of any pillows and stuffed animals we had in our reading corners, and we institute no hugging rules for the sweet kindergarten girls. It doesn’t matter- those little eggs cling to our children’s heads,and those nasty black bugs crawl around on top as we’re teaching.
    Our problem is- our parents don’t treat it. They mean to, of course, but some can’t read even in Spanish, some don’t understand the directions, and some absolutely don’t have the time. Some treat the hair, but not the furniture and toys in their house, which means their children never get rid of it. Other cultures do not see lice as a problem, and don’t understand why we’ve asked them to get rid of it. Some families have their own remedies from their countries, which never seem to work.
    Can you tell this battle has just exhausted us? We spend more time communicating to parents about lice than about their children’s reading.

Comments are closed.