This past weekend, we all enjoyed a legendary Super Bowl. The New England Patriots and Tom Brady played one of the best games in the 50-year history of the game and were crowned NFL champions.
Do you have a junior football champion at home that deserves a crown? Make sure the crown wasn’t on the head of someone infested with head lice. School sports encourage our children to share victory, share goodwill and share helmets? Uh Oh!
Yes, sharing helmets is one of many ways that children can transmit head lice. As soon as kids start swapping helmets, head lice emerge as a problem. A good precautionary measure is to have your child use their own helmet. After the game, during the team huddle, be careful about bumping heads as well.
How Can Parents Help Their Children?
What are some ways parents can help keep their kids from getting head lice? Education — Explain to your children that head lice are spread from direct contact. They should not share hats, scarves, coats, combs, brushes, towels, sports uniforms, or like we mentioned previously, helmets!
More than 12 million children will contract this common contagion each year. Children are often in close contact with each other transmitting the parasite, and it is not a fun thing to deal with.
Head lice lay eggs that are hard to see and remove. They are called nits, and they secrete a sticky glue-like substance, which makes them adhere to the hair shaft close to the scalp. The nits are what make treating head lice difficult, as it takes only one nit to hatch and then you will have active head lice. An active head louse will lay 6-10 nits a day which then hatch within 7-10 days. If you get a head lice treatment and even one nit is left behind, say hello to another head lice outbreak starting all over again.