Woman Jailed Over Lice-Infested Children

Originally posted by FredT
But again not enough information to be jumping to all these conclutions.

When I first read this thread, I suspected immediately that there was likely more to the story.

Holmes is in jail in lieu of $5,000 bond. Southwest Regional police said they are investigating another incident involving her alleged neglect of her children.

Link.

It doesn't say what the other "incident" involves, but maybe the lice issue was used as a proxy to the real concern.

[edit on 3-4-2008 by loam]

As a former pre-K worker,
(several different positions.)
I saw how some children with lax parents seemed to KEEP lice!
They would come in, dirty and attention-hungry.
When we found lice on our students, (I did more than once)
the parents would take them home and send them back with nits. When we told them we had a 'no nits' policy, they would argue that there weren't any.
We literally had to pull nits out and tape them to an envelope to show parents.
Many times, a near-sighted health department worker would give them a 'clean' certificate, when they weren't.

These SAME children came AGAIN and AGAIN with lice, because the parents wouldn't clean the house and children properly.

BTW, lice HATE hairspray and gel products.(cover your schoolage children in it!) I've also heard they hate 'seabreeze' face cleaner.

I learned how to hug children at waist-level to avoid getting lice the hard way.

I'm not really sure what to make of this situation. From the replies in this thread, it seems as if there is an epidemic of lice going around. I don't know anyone with young kids so I don't have any experience. Although I will say that when I was a kid, we all got the letter at the beginning of the year saying that if you had lice you had to be sent home. And the teacher regaled us with tales of kids being sent home in potato sacks because they had lice back when they were children. But not once from pre school to 12th grade did I ever know anyone, hear about anyone, or have to deal with anyone having lice! When I was in school (graduated 02), lice was just a funny story old people told about the olden days.

I feel so sorry for those poor children! The discomfort...and the humiliation! I too am very curious to see what happens.

My head is itching just typing this. I recently had an allergic reaction to shampoo and was so paranoid that I had lice...it was awful!

Putting someone in jail for nits is ridiculous, its not like they were going untreated or crawling with body lice and other parasites!

A couple of years ago my son had a horrible case of head lice, he kept saying his head itched and I kept looking and not finding anything in his super light super thick blond hair. Until finally i found a full grown bug crawling around. He must have had lice for weeks before we finally figured it out. We had switched shampoos several times, switched laundry soap and of course nothing helped.

We used the shampoo which caused an awful rash on his already tender scalp and I felt so horrible again. Then the nit comb wouldn't do anything on his super fine hair so I spent several hours with tweezers and both of us in tears. That didnt really work either so finally I shaved his little head.

I have hair down past the middle of my back, I was/am petrified of having to comb through it with that tiny little plastic torture device.

He got them again within a couple of months.
That time I used Neem oil..stinky stuff but it works!,
it also lubricates the hair shaft to make nits fall off really easily We also now blow dry his hair once or twice a week on low to help prevent them.They have approved a new device to treat them that is basically a low heat hair dryer with a comb attached. You can achieve the same effect with a low watt hairdryer on low or one of those old fashioned hair dryers with the attached shower cap...ask your grandma she might have one floating around.