The itchy infestation (almost) every kid will get

At first, I thought I was allergic to my shampoo. I’d switched to a new brand recently, and while my hair looked amazing, I’d developed an itchy ring around the perimeter of my skull, like someone had put a poison crown on me. When the itch became so distracting I couldn’t work, I reluctantly switched back to my old, frizz-promoting hair care regimen. 

Then my older kid started scratching.

It turned out that about half his class had head lice. At our house, closer inspection revealed scuttling insects on both our scalps. We began an odyssey of combing and shampooing that lasted weeks, caused at least one meltdown per person, and left our bathroom full of sinister metal nit combs and half-empty bottles of goo. 

Our experience is a rite of passage for young children and their families. In addition to being disturbing on a psychological level (I, for one, do not like the phrase “blood meal”), lice can cause intense itching; Logan, 5, another recent sufferer, described his recent case to me as “super, amazing, big, wild itchy.”

Lice are often a source of shame and anxiety for families. The insects have “been historically associated with things like poor personal hygiene or houselessness or a certain socioeconomic status,” said Dawn Nolt, a pediatric infectious disease doctor and the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s 2022 recommendations on lice. 

In fact, however, there’s some evidence that they prefer clean hair, Kate King, a school nurse in Ohio and the president of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), told me. And the insects infest people of all walks of life, all around the world, though kids and caregivers are the most susceptible.

Lice are an annoyance, not a danger, Nolt said — they do not spread disease. But some school districts, including New York City, where I live, bar kids from the classroom if they’re found to have lice. For my kid, that meant a day spent getting combed in front of the TV, instead of attending kindergarten.

Experts say no-lice policies — and in-school lice checks in which a nurse or other adult combs an entire class for bugs — don’t actually stop the spread of lice, and are especially problematic as school districts battle chronic absenteeism in the wake of Covid-19. “Since the pandemic, we really appreciate the benefits of in-person schooling,” Nolt told me. “Head lice is not a reason for a child to miss school.”

The CDC has actually recommended against sending kids home for lice for more than 10 years. But a website redesign led to a resurgence of interest in the policy at the beginning of the 2024–25 school year, alongside what some say is an uptick in lice cases after a pandemic lull. 

Instead of panicking, experts say, families and schools alike should approach lice as what they are: annoying bugs that want to eat us, but that can be defeated with the right tools, and the right attitude. 

As Logan told me, “Don’t give up.”

The truth about head lice

Head lice are about the size of a sesame seed and can live on a person’s head for about a month, feeding on blood. During that time, they lay eggs called nits, which they stick to the hair shaft very close to the scalp with an adhesive material. Those eggs incubate for about 10 days, Nolt said, before hatching and maturing into new lice.

The itching that is the hallmark of a lice infestation is actually caused by the insect’s saliva, which can cause a mild allergic reaction in humans. This reaction takes four to six weeks to develop, Nolt said, so once you start scratching, you’ve already had lice for a while. 

Lice don’t have wings, and they can’t jump, but they spread by crawling from one person’s head to another, usually through head-to-head contact (something that happens a lot among little kids, who like to hug and roughhouse and generally get up in one another’s faces). They can spread through shared hats or clothing, but that’s much less common, Nolt said, because lice simply can’t survive for very long away from their source of warmth and food.

For some kids, the worst part of having lice is getting rid of them. Typically, an adult washes a child’s hair, then uses a special lice comb (included with many over-the-counter lice shampoos) to find all the nits and remove them. Depending on the length of a kid’s hair, the process can take hours.

“The combing really hurt,” Thomas, 7, told me. His parents let him play video games as a distraction, but “it still really hurt,” he said. 

Some kids don’t mind the combing — Byron, Logan’s 2-and-a-half-year-old brother, called it “tingly.” Adding some mythos may help: Logan and Byron informed me that their family had used “nit destroyer warrior” combs “made by lasers.” (A fact-check reveals that some nit combs are purportedly made using “laser technology.”)

Complicating matters further is the fact that lice appear to have evolved some resistance to pyrethrin and permethrin, the active ingredients in many over-the-counter lice shampoos. Some research shows that dimethicone, a gooey polymer that basically suffocates lice, remains effective. This is what finally worked in my house, after several rounds of permethrin-based products failed. It is also extremely oily and takes forever to wash out.

All of this is stressful enough without adding school disruption to the mix. Once children have symptoms, they’ve usually already had lice for weeks, Nolt said. Sending them home for a day or two does little to limit spread, but deprives the child of key learning time. Along with the CDC, the NASN and the American Academy of Pediatrics also recommend against sending kids home for lice.

In-school lice checks — a mainstay of my millennial childhood that’s still a reality in New York and elsewhere — are also ineffective, experts say. “It doesn’t produce any real results,” said King, the NASN president. “It’s also very demeaning and shaming for students.”

When a child has lice at her school, King contacts the family with information about treatment, and provides free lice shampoo upon request. “Our main focus is to be a helper, not a punisher.”

Ultimately, experts say schools and families should think of lice not as something shameful or frightening, but as a part of childhood — annoying, sure, but normal and not always avoidable. “Head lice are like the common cold,” said King. “Sometimes, it just happens.”

What I’m reading

Nearsightedness is on the rise among kids around the world, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, possibly as a result of the rise in “near work,” such as reading and writing (the effect of smartphones and other screens is still unclear). The report’s authors recommend two hours of outdoor time per day to counteract the trend, at least one of which should take place during school.

Students with disabilities lack access to college readiness programs, another report finds, even though they’re entitled to such support under federal law. 

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, tens of thousands of kids are home from school, with no idea when they can return to the classroom. Even remote learning isn’t possible in some areas of North Carolina because of disruptions to internet and electric service. “This isn’t Covid remote learning. This is nothing,” a professor who has studied the impact of Hurricane Katrina told the New York Times.

At my house, we are reading Bill Bryson’s A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. Warning: This has required me to spend a lot of time trying to explain the Big Bang and the shape of the universe, topics that are pretty cognitively taxing at bedtime.

Get in touch

For Halloween, I’m hoping to write about scary stories. As a fan of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Goosebumps, I’m curious what kids are reading (or watching) to freak themselves out nowadays. For adults, I also want to hear about your favorite scary tales from childhood — or the ones that gave you nightmares for weeks. If you have observations about spooky kid content past or present, let me know at anna.north@vox.com. Your eerie recommendations (or warnings) could make it into a newsletter soon!