Get some tea tree oil and add it to your shampoo. Check the link below

Here is a link that might be useful: tea tree oil for lice

Don't forget to have a good cry. Somehow I escaped lice with all three of my kids but my daughter has not been so lucky. She thought she would never get rid of them. Four kids infested. She had two blondes and she said the blondes were the hardest to treat because she couldn't see the nits.

My sister in law used peanut butter, then Dawn dishwashing soap.

Tea tree oil? Be careful not to get any in the eyes. The great smell of tea tree oil quickly turns to yuck if you use it too often.

I was waiting in line at the pharmacy when I saw a woman with long dreadlocks shopping for lice treatment, reading the labels very carefully. I have seen her and her family around town before... All the kids had dreadlocks too. I couldn't imagine a worse case situation. I'd be shaving heads. LOL!

Massaging mineral oil into their scalps can also help smother the critters. That's good to do right before you use the nit comb.

Sounds like you already know to wash the bedding, jackets, sweaters, caps and so on.

Also, upholstered furniture can harbor lice. If you don't want to spray furniture with insecticide, you can sprinkle it with boric acid powder.

At any rate, it is a process that, unfortunately, takes time.

ARG! I have been there!!

Be careful using the lice shampoo - you don't want to poison them. I think the critters have become resistant to it anyway.

I tried the Cetaphil treatment and had some luck with that.

This is what worked for me:

First I used the chemical shampoo RID - just ONCE!

Then I bought coconut scented Suave conditioner. I used a large amount on DD's hair (very long and thick at the time).

I massaged it in good combed it through with a wide toothed comb, then sectioned it off with clips.

I then used a nit comb and combed repeatedly a very small section at a time. Starting at the scalp and combing to the tip. I would wipe off the nit comb onto a stack of paper towels I had ready. It really got out the nits and live ones - ....shudder.... I would place the paper towels into zip lock bags once in a while to keep them out of everything else.

Then we washed with regular shampoo and blow dried the hair. I went over it with my good flat iron at 400. Just a quick pass with the straightener - like normal use.

Make sure you have the bedding and pillows taken care of too - before they go to bed again on them!!

I wash the bedding in the HOTTEST water and dry on the HOTTEST setting!! I also run the pillow through on the HOTTEST setting.

I did this every night until there were no more nits (I used a MAGNIFYING glass to check!!! Seriously!!)

It is exhausting doing this - but you have to really work at it to get it done.

Do wash the bedding every day!!

I ended up getting some cheap pillows and just tossing them out once we were done.

I heat treated her good pillow and then stored it in a large plastic bag until it was "all clear"

I sprayed my car seats with a lice insecticide spray also - but that stuff is nasty. Don't use it on the kids or around them.

Once you are clear - keep checking. It is so dang easy to get them!

Train the kids to not touch heads or get close. Tell them to always put their hats inside their coat sleeve - not in a cubby at school.

I'm an old country gal and lived most of my young life on farms and ranches, I've done a lot of lice patrol. Hottest water is not going to help kill or rid the lice any better than a good detergent and bottle of vinegar or 2 cups of Absorbine horse lineament. One or the other in each load is fine in even cold water.
Clean hair is more attractive to lice because they can grip it and stick the eggs (nits) to it. Use a nice hair oil on the girls and leave it on over the weekend. A good hair oil softens any nits to pick off and smothers the live critters and will give a healthy shine to hair after shampooing.
Beds and linens, pillows, carpeting, pets, stuffed toys, hats, coats, most clothing, upholstered furniture and car seats have to be debugged. Many good suggestions already. Hair tools and accessories need to be picked good and cleaned with soap and Absorbine horse lineament, not boiled, boiling water will only ruin your items in most instances. I've used the horse lineament many times to clean out lice on the farm critters and in the bunk houses. I believe you can still find it at most farm supply stores. I wouldn't use it on the girls but it can be diluted to use on pets.
I have used it diluted on myself once. Really it tingled and made my neck and shoulder muscle aches hurt a lot less if there were any lice in my hair they were gone after. I had one little louse crawl on my forehead and got the crawly icky feeling. Snow was too deep to go get anything else and when You even think you got bugs doing the limbo in your hair you'll try anything. LOL I just used about a cap full in 8 ounces of water and pored it on my hair let it sit 15 minutes and shampooed out.

A lot to process to git rid of the little buggers but you can.
Don't let them freak you they are just little hungry bugs trying to make a life for themselves.

On the lighter side
If you want to consider a pet to help control the problems of lice, a monkey will pick nits and lice for snacks. Social grooming Got to love it.

LIL

The website below has good "natural" remedies. Lice has always been one of my worst fears... fortunately DD never got them.

Easy solution and it works. Saturate the hair with mayonnaise. Yep, mayonnaise. Let it sit for a while, then shampoo. The hair will be lice free besides being clean and shiny.

Does she have long hair that makes it difficult to find? Maybe cutting the hair a bit shorter would make it more manageable? I've known of people doing this and saying it worked to finally get rid of it once and for all. I've never experienced this with my daughter, luckily.

Did it actually work for you, arosegirl? I have heard about the mayo thing - but never tried it. A friend did - and it did not work.

It might work if you do it like the conditioner or other things and comb out the lice and do it repeatedly - but just one treatment with mayo and a wash won't work.

Liljunker is right about not needing to wash things in hot (but I always wash my bed linens in hot) - but you do need to dry on the hot setting.

Liljunker - if you had felt a louse from a farm critter - it wouldn't infest you. I don't know why, unless it is a different body temp, but they don't infest humans.

Oh the joys of motherhood!! lol No advice just wishing good luck!!

I work in an elementary school and every year we have quite a few reported cases of lice. Please alert your school nurse so that she (or he) can check your child's classmates for lice. They picked them up from somewhere and until the person with the original infestation is cleansed, they will continue to spread to other kids. I know it can be a tough thing (and sometimes very embarrassing), but it's really important to cure it at the source.

Thank you Lord, we haven't seen a louse in many years.
When my daughter was in elementary school it was bad enough I cried more than a few tears over the nightmare, spent a small fortune on all those specific lice shampoos and found that none of them ever worked.
My final solution was similar to the mayonnaise idea - I lathered my girl's head with vaseline and left it on for 24 hours. It takes 5 or 6 washes with a good clarifying shampoo to get rid of the vaseline, but it also killed every single bug!
Much cheaper and much more effective solution than any lice shampoos sold, in my opinion.
I wish you the best of luck with your lice issue, and the other poster is correct, the children's school(s) should be notified.
Suzan J

I have been on mission trips to Honduras 9 times. Mayonnaise (Hellman's) is what we used on the children there and on the workers that were exposed to the children and had lice. It really does work. We also had to use cold water, there is no hot water there and we used Dawn dishwashing detergent to shampoo. Dawn breaks down grease in cold water.

My sister's granddaughter got lice from school and mayonnaise is what she used to get rid of the lice.

The only thing that has ever worked 100 percent for me is the prescription shampoo you get from your doctor.

My daughter was about 8 when she caught them. I discovered it when I was getting her ready for church. Needless to say, no church for us. Instead I slunk into the pharmacy and figured the lice shampoo would be with the regular shampoo. But of course it wasn't, so I had to ASK for help. I was so embarrassed. Then I had to go tell my neighbor because the girls played together all the time. I felt so bad about it. Later on in life, I figured it really wasn't the worst thing in the world.

It really wasn't that hard to get rid of them (only one child to cope with) but she kept getting them back. We'd been to the doctor and done just about everything under the sun. Then one day she was out playing with the neighbor girls and I looked down at the blond one and the lice were literally crawling through her head.

I was furious! That mother had never even tried to get rid of them. I went storming over there and told her what I saw and to keep her kids home until she took care of the problem. She said she hadn't noticed. Well, duh!

Well, now my head itches :-) Just make sure they aren't bringing them home over and over again. Like mrsmarv said, contact the school. I think I'd try the mayo because the first shampoo we used put an oily film all over my daughter's head.

Do not use the special shampoos more often than prescribed. It can really be hard on a kid's scalp and blister it.

I found the prescription shampoo worked best.

Mothers of boys just gave them a very short buzz cut as lice and nits don't like to be very close to the scalp (1/2 inch or so away from scalp if I remember rightly). Other moms used hot hair curling irons right up next to the scalp as they combed thin sections of hair across the scalp. Be careful not to burn the scalp.

As a life long hairdresser, I have seen many cases of lice.
For kids, especially in September, and right after Christmas break.
I don't know why, but blondes seem to be more often targets for lice. Just experience speaks here.
One of the worst cases I have seen, was in a teacher. You have to know they are always at risk. Once I colored a teachers hair, and they were crawling off of her head and onto the white towel I had wrapped around her shoulders. I was surprised I missed them at first glance. Something we are trained to do.
I always used NIT on my kids growing up, but I know it does not always work.
My best advice is to go to the doctor and get an RX for lice. It is such a pain in the butt, but everyone lives through it.
Does anybody's head itch right about now??

Trin

About a year ago a good friend called in desperation, horror and embarrassment. She had lice. After calming her down I did a lot of research on different remedies. The interesting one was to use original Listerine. Soak the hair and put on a shower cap for an hour or two then shower out. The mayo was another but this sounded much less messy. Denorex was highly recommended. Some suggested cheap coconut shampoo and conditioner, like Suave, Dawn dish soap (Dawn is very versatile, isn't it?), olive oil, mineral oil (I suppose most any oil would work) and vinegar. A couple of the non-prescription shampoos, Rid was one name and I can't remember the other brand. I also did a lot of research on what to do around the house. Surprisingly, it's not as bad as one would think. The major issue is the person. Lice need the body heat. They don't live long off the body. And they need the heat so if you can put pillows, linens, etc into a freezer, or outdoors in frigid weather you can leave it there for a while and take care of a problem. They also need air so a plastic bag will eventually suffocate them. And another interesting thing, any nits more than 1/8" to 1/4" or so from the scalp are probably dead. Not enough heat. You should also vacuum often and dispose of the bag at each vacuuming. OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE!

I suggested she throw all combs and brushes and start new rather than mess with sanitizing the old ones. Use cheapie ones (disposable) and toss often until resolved which she did. And start checking at work, church, and other places. Embarrassing, but the fact is, it's a common problem and NOT indicative or suggestive that the victim is of poor hygiene or anything. Even the best and cleanest of homes. Not sure, but her suspicion is that she picked them up from a hotel when she was traveling on business, although it could be from anywhere. In the plane, a restaurant, elevator or anyplace. But given the timing she thinks the came back from her trip down south.

She used the Walgreens brand of lice shampoos as directed, in between used Dawn and Desonex and although she had bought some Rid, they were cleaned up by the second treatment from the first bottle. She spent days washing everything in the house, showered 2-3 times a day, vacuumed like crazy and brushed, combed and picked nits continually. She feels the shampoo helped but thinks that just picking nits probably did as much or more. If you get rid of the nits, you won't get the lice. But if you don't get them all you have trouble. And she just used her fingernails and pulled them out and said she pulled out a lot of her own hair, literally, with them since they sort of cement themselves onto the hair. It was a couple weeks of chaos, but apparently her infestation wasn't too bad.

I also read about an electric comb that was highly recommended and it seems like it would work. You'd comb and it would short out and zap and nit when it hit it. About $25 IIRC.

I'm just guessing, but seems to me that if you covered the bed with plastic there'd be a barrier to keep the bad little buggers separated from the good little buggers. Then just wash the sleepwear and of course all towels, washcloths, etc.

Don't forget to sanitize the nit comb! This is a time to nit-pick! Sorry, I know how you must feel, but it's not the end of the world.

Some good info sites:
CDC info
There's a bunch of other sites out there too. Maybe these will help. Good luck!

Been there done that...LOL...My daughter had them when she was about 10. tried RID 4 times...it did not work. Looked on the internet and found this site: LiceHelp.com ordered it started using it that night and they were gone in no time...All natural and NO picking NITs, no worring about them staying on the sheets etc. My daughter loved the smell and her hair shined.

Good Luck

We got a notice from school that head lice ha been found in several children and how to stop the spread. I freaked out, then checked the part in my daughter's hair and saw a live one crawling. freaked out even more, I bought enough lice shampoo for all 4 of us. washed and dried all bedding, towels, pillows,etc. The school thought it had been transmitted on the bus, via the headrests. The letter from the school nurse gave extensive information. Fortunately, one treatment plus my thorough housecleaning was enough to rid us of those awful pests. Read all the posts above. and good luck. This too shall pass.