Creepy and Crawly

It's icky, but it happens...LICE! Pickles came home with the bugs about two weeks ago. Of course, I went into full research mode scouring the inter-webs for different home remedies to treat them. In the meantime, I washed her hair with dog shampoo. Now, somebody out there is all "eeewww, dog shampoo?!?" Yes. Many people use it because it has the same chemicals that the more expensive lice shampoos have. It's not too harsh since actually, dogs have more sensitive skin than we do (which is why you can't bathe them every day or every other day. If we could, Pepper would smell MUCH better). Alas, it turns out that today's lice have become resistant to these chemicals (pyrethrin and piperonyl butoxide). Yeah, that's awesome. Just what I want, some mutated, death-defying super bugs crawling around on my kid.

After sifting through a many articles all saying what I just summed up, I found a forum in which one parent said she used Listerine. LISTERINE! For some reason, it just struck me and, hey, I have to do something! Game. On.

I bought a bottle of the old fashioned yellow Listerine. The green and blue ones listed sugars and sweeteners in the ingredients and didn't want a sticky mess on my hands...or in Pickles' hair.
Without washing first, I coated her scalp with it, cap by cap to make sure I was getting every inch. After I had covered her entire scalp and rubbed it in a little, I poured Listerine into her hair, again, cap by cap. 



Now, the parent who recommended this said her kid had it in her hair overnight. But we had plans that evening and quite frankly, it's my M.O. to rush through projects I'm super eager to see the outcome of... Did I just refer to Pickles as a project? I left it in her hair for about 2 hours.

The results? EXCELLENT! As I was rinsing her hair out, I could see the little buggers floating away in the water and down the drain! I had to make sure she didn't get her hair in the water cuz I didn't want them sticking again. Duh! Now, there's two things I should mention. 1) this obviously does not deal with eggs. When I went through Pickles hair before washing, it seemed all eggs were empty. But you never can tell and you don't want newly hatched nits to just roam free like they own the place. So 2) I did a second treatment about 4 days later.

Pickles has been a happy camper since the first treatment. Before I did the second treatment, she commented that her head had not itched since the first time. So, if you're a desperate parent who has tried dog shampoo, mayo, olive oil, tea tree oil, petroleum jelly (Vasoline), coconut oil, vinegar or Dawn dish soap...well, you've already rubbed all that other crap in there, you might as well give this a try!