I’ve learned nit eradication is almost never permanent. They come back - not because the treatment wasn’t successful and we got a re-infection through a failure to get rid of the eggs, but because they caught them again in a fresh round.

Kids get nits and if you’re unlucky they get them over and over again. So what do you do? How do you live with them?

I’ve learned that getting to an outbreak early is absolutely crucial if you’re going to contain and control the outbreak in the home.

I’ve introduced a fortnightly nit check in the house where we spend 5 minutes doing a thorough check (often do cheeky little checks while we’re watching TV, but not in depth and the kids know what I’m up to!). 

My process is simple, I do a visual check to see if there are any live lice on the scalp, which are obviously a clear indicator that there’s an outbreak, at which point we’re straight into the lotion.

If there are no live lice I do an egg check using some left over glo-powder from their last outbreak. I simply go through the process as if they have got nits.

I start at the crown, spreading powder evenly and work my way out, paying particularly attention behind the ears. My kids have short hair, so it’s relatively easy but with long hair or super thick hair it’s important to focus your attention and time on the hair closest to the scalp. Nit eggs further down the hair strands pose little risk of turning into live lice (which takes 8-9 days) as they are likely to be non-viable. 

Looking for things that might not be there, or could be dandruff is obviously quite challenging which is why glo-powder is so handy - a flick of a UV light and suddenly all is revealed. 

So, if you’re anything like our house where it’s a ‘when’ not an ‘if’, I strongly recommend keeping your glo-powder around for a quick ID and introducing a regular check as getting onto a nit outbreak early is crucial to avoiding the all out war against lice and reluctant kids.