Dealing with Lousy Remarks
By Ann Douglas
Some of the things people say when your child has been infected with head lice can be difficult to deal with—particularly if the people making those remarks haven't had any direct experience with head lice or aren't fully up to speed on the head lice facts of life. Here are some tips on coping with what can be a truly lousy situation at times.
Offer reassurance. If you start to receive calls from your child's friends' parents, worried that their kids could become infected with head lice, remind them that head lice is an extremely common condition (up to 40% of Canadian kids could become infected with head lice during this school year), that you have chosen a head lice treatment method and that you are in the process of treating your child.
Keep your head, even if the other parents are losing theirs. Try to stay calm, even if the parent who has called you is saying thoughtless—even unkind—things about you or your child. If the comment has been based on misinformation, try to deal with it on that level and move on: e.g., "Actually, head lice are just as attracted to clean hair as to dirty hair. How often children wash their hair has nothing to do with their likelihood of becoming infected. That's a myth."
Arm your child with the facts. While you'll want to shield your child from any hurtful remarks (she doesn't need to be party to those comments about her supposedly "dirty" hair), it only makes sense to arm her with the facts about head lice, so that she can set the record straight if those all-too-common head lice myths show up in the classroom or on the playground.
Spread the head lice facts. Remind yourself and your child that parents and kids tend to hit the panic button when they don't have the facts about a particular situation, and the best remedy for that is to share appropriate information. Pass along what you've learned about head lice to other parents and to your child's teacher. Let them know about this website so they can learn more: www.beatheadlice.ca.
For more words of parenting wisdom visit Ann Douglas: The Mother of All Blogs.
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