Here's How to Put It All Together and Keep Lice Away

Although we often think of winter as the worst time for head lice, children are vulnerable to head lice at any time of the year. Sleepovers, church activities, sports, summer camp, school, day care, and the like are common places for lice to be spread.

In order to make sure that head lice doesn't get a foothold in your life, you need to develop a habit of prevention. Here's how it goes:

First Line of Defense: Daily use of No-Lice Hair Spray to make lice head the other way! Also spray thoroughly after every hair shampoo.

Second Line of Defense: Weekly comb-through with the Robi-Comb, just in case some daring louse is checking out the real estate.

Third Line of Defense: Visual Inspection. First off, know what you're looking for. I found that I had a misinformed idea of what lice eggs would look like. I thought they would be mainly white and easy to see. I hadn't noticed the greyish things that were so well-camouflaged on my dark-headed children! You can see what nits and lice look like here. Once you know what you're looking for, make sure you visually inspect the hair right down within an inch of the scalp as you Robi-Comb each week.

Fourth Line of Defense: If your Robi-Comb ends up killing a louse, it's time for action! You need to thoroughly Robi-Comb every person in the household, and then follow up by thoroughly going through each person's hair with the egg comb. Repeat this procedure every day for a week. After that, you can go to every-other-day, and after two weeks you could go back to once-per-week combing.

We had a situation a few months ago when I was doing random Robi-Comb checks, and I found one louse on one of my children's heads. Fortunately, I could tell that this was an immature louse and that it was not old enough to have started laying eggs (you can learn more about this here). Still, I went through every child's hair as carefully as I could, and found not one more louse or egg on anyone. I continued to comb through every day for several days and never did find one more louse nor any eggs. By doing my random head check, I managed to help prevent what could have been a miserable lice infestation!

Do you see how easy it can be to keep head lice away?