Unless you have a mood disorder there is rarely such a thing as “too sensitive.” How you feel emotionally is how you feel.
How you react to how you feel is the issue. Sounds like you have an ally in the aunt who is on top of the situation. I’d work to avoid entanglements with the child’s birth mom for his sake and for family peace. And I’d continue to strengthen communication with the aunt as needed.
If there is an opportunity to communicate to the birth mother that you need an update on the child’s needs when he comes to visit, and if you are able to do it in a moment when you can avoid presenting it with irritation, I would take advantage of it. Perhaps a short note or phone call if you are unsure of your present relationship with her?
The more harmonious and cooperative you can be with the child’s mom the easier his life will be.
We went through head lice a couple months ago. I just used some Nix with some of that enzyme stuff to dissolve the nit glue and we were fine. I have really kinky curly hair so it sucked trying to pull the tiny comb through (we got the metal kind, not the ones that come with the kit).
Nobody here had to get a haircut. It wasn’t *that *big a deal. Maybe we caught it early or something but the cost was the most annoying part. Around fifty bucks to for the shampoo, enzyme and combs. I think the most important purchase was the enzyme. I also washed all the bedding and put away stuffed animals in the attic for a while. It was originally just going to be for a few weeks so they could starve but since she hasn’t really missed them I’m thinking they can just stay up there.
I would be HIGHLY pissed if it was the situation you’re in. No way would I not tell the person who is about to care for my child that s/he has lice! As soon as I found out I called the places we’d been in that time, even though it was kind of embarrassing.
It’s frustrating because this is not the first time we - and by we I mostly mean Mr. Thief- probably should have been kept in the loop directly, instead of hearing third and fourth hand what’s going on.
As it happens, the aunt found nits. So he is getting retreated and we are scrambling to find childcare for him. I can’t expose the other kids at the day camp until we know everything is gone. I wouldn’t be allowed to even if I wanted to.
If you don’t want him in the house and make him stay with his aunt that’s justifiable, if you want to kill the mother that is justifiable (no jury of parents who have dealt with lice will convict you), but cutting his hair against his will is going past your prerogative as stepmother and will create all sorts of problems. If the father does it, and it is obvious you were not behind it, that;s another matter.
If he’s still itching, he almost certainly has live adults, in addition to the nits that Auntie found. It’s possible to itch at the mere thought of lice (my scalp is tingling now because I’m reading this thread), but it’s more likely that he still is infested.
And it’s not the worst experience ever, but it’s certainly a matter of courtesy not only to you, but to the boy. You need to know what treatments and precautions the boy needs. And the boy needs to get treated, because the lice are NOT going to go away on their own.
I usually don’t think people are being too sensitive, being very sensitive my own silly self, but here… there are going to be things like this that pop up. If your husband’s ex were perfect, he’d still be with her, right? Mistakes are going to happen. Accept it, suck it up and deal. He’s just as much the kid’s parent as she is, he can deal with it- or you, as his proxy. If you make a big deal over every little thing, you’re going to have a hard time dealing with the family. And no, hair doesn’t have to be cut to see nits or to treat. You don’t see little girls running around with shaved heads because they had lice, do you?
I think that clean hair is actually more suceptible because it’s easier for the lice to attach their eggs.
We’ve also used the Nix creme in our household with good results. We used the plastic combs which came with it. The thing is, you have to really really keep checking for nits for about 10 days to 2 weeks after treatment.
One thing I did was to use the comb after every regular hair-washing. Another thing you can do is to get a flashlight and go through your child’s hair while they are watching TV. Sometimes you will end up with some stubborn nits which are still stuck to hairs even though they are old and dead. You can tell that there’s no more creature inside the egg part because they are clear-looking. Anyway, sometimes I used a small pair of scissors to cut off hairs with nits attached to them. Be sure that you discard all the hairs in an outside trash can.
It’s a slow, painstaking process but it’s not insurmountable.
You had BUGS in your HAIR and barely noticed? If it’s an American attitude to hate having creepy crawlies in your hair (and, as Doper Chic pointed out, in every other part of your house), then I don’t want to leave.
Nobody likes headlice, but hysterical house cleaning in reaction to them seems much more common in the US than elsewhere.
And lice don’t live long away from a human host, so no, they aren’t infesting every corner of your house. That’s much more characteristic of fleas and bedbugs.
From what I’ve heard, they can live in other areas and you do have to be really diligent about cleaning clothing and rugs and stuffed animals and stuff.
They’re not bugs. They’re head lice. Every kid got them at school at least once, and I don’t remember them being particularly unpleasant. The nurse combed some rather unpleasant-smelling concoction through your hair, you had to sit up for a while, and then showered and went to bed.
I got them, and maybe it’s because I’m an American (:rolleyes:) but yes, it was horrid. More likely because my mom was a nurse!
They are fairly unpleasant; they itch horribly, and it’s just gross. The chemicals aren’t just put in your hair. I mean, not in my treatment. You have to scrub your head with them, and then really wash your hair to get it all out, and then you have to comb through it with the nit-comb to find all of the eggs. Maybe straight hair works OK with this. Curly hair does not. It took us forever and I was super careful forever more after that.
Since when is head lice not bugs? I’m just really grateful I never got them. The closest I came was as an adult when I had a friend who had them. Horrifyingly, she’d even spent the night in my bed before she and I found out. I’m still grateful never to have gotten them. Ugh.
Some people have been shown to not be as bothered by them, as in the itch factor, not the gross factor.
I have had them twice recently in my adult life and it is awful. Just because I have had much worse things happen to me doesn’t mean I like lice or think they’re no big deal.
When I have them, I am terribly, terribly itchy. I can feel them crawling. I have long, thick hair and no one to help comb it out, so that is a huge pain in the ass. While they don’t live long outside the body, you do have to strip your bed, be careful of what your head touches, etc. It’s a lot of itchy, tedious work. I’d much rather spend that time doing something else rather than picking bugs out of my hair.
So OP, you’re not being oversensitive. You’re having someone come into your home with something that could pass to you or others. If the mother can tell someone else, the message could have gotten to you directly.
Mom absolutely should have told you directly that he had lice.
That said, lice aren’t that big a deal. My daughter has hair down to the middle of her back and she’s picked up lice at school at least once a year for the last four years. At first we went into full-blown crisis mode. Now we know the drill:
Change her bedding.
Put a lot of conditioner in her hair and comb it out thoroughly with a nit comb.
Repeat 3 and 6 days later to catch any babies that hatch from any eggs we missed.
The poisons are worthless. Really, all that works is careful combing to get all the adults and bugs out. But you don’t need to fumigate the house or shave any heads.
I never had lice as a child. The only time I’ve had it was as an adult, when my sister in law allowed her daughter to invite my daughter to spend the night/weekend with her, knowing that she had lice in her apartment. We used Kwell, which was a shampoo, and we also had to put all the stuffed animals in plastic bags and wash all the bedding.