Head lice is difficult to treat, even when your child has short hair. Most children have trouble sitting still, and don't want combing through their hair with a tiny comb. The problem is, if you don't kill the head lice, they will continue to infest your child's head. If you don't wash bedding in the child's room, your child's head will quickly become infested again. It won't matter how many times you wash your child's hair if you aren't using the right products and the right techniques at the same time. Make sure that you look over your child's head carefully to remove all nits, even if they are resistant to the treatment. The following will show you how to kill head lice.

The First Step is to Stay Calm

Lice is gross, but it's important to understand that lice isn't really detrimental to your health. It may take some time to truly rid your child's head of lice, as the treatments used to kill the adults doesn't always work for the lice eggs and vice versa. You will need to check your child's head on a daily basis for a few weeks, to make sure that your treatments are working.

Natural Remedies to Try to Kill Head Lice

The most important part of getting rid of head lice is combing through the hair thoroughly using a special fine-toothed metal comb. Found in most drug stores, this comb is used to remove even the tiniest nits attached to the hair shaft. You can try putting olive oil all over your child's head, but the olive oil has to stay on overnight. The olive oil smothers the head lice, but you'll still have to comb out your child's head carefully once the night is over. Heating the hair with a hair dryer after washing with over the counter lice shampoo can improve your chances of killing the head lice. Petroleum jelly often works as well as olive oil

Over-the-Counter and Prescription Remedies for Killing Lice

Natroba is a prescription topical lotion that is approved for patients four years old and older to kill head lice. Sklice is another product that works the same way.The treatment is put into dry hair, and remains in the hair for ten minutes. Careful combing afterwards is required. Ulesfia is another prescription used for head lice, killing the adults but not the nits. It's important to use products that both kill the adult lice and remove the nits.