Malika, a little scratching is normal. Check the nape of his neck for signs of a rash - if there is any redness there to a greater extent than anywhere else, check his scalp in daylight for eggs or lice. Or do the conditioner run I recommend below.
IC, you have learned my lessons well, grasshopper...
Combing the hair in multiple directions is important because otherwise you can miss some. To avoid using pesticides unnecessarily, the conditioner is almost essential.
Other tips - tie back your own hair and/or cover it up with a shower cap.
I looked at the website - it's good, but leaves out some stuff and has things in it I don't think are necessary, such as rinsing the comb under running water. I keep a bowl of water beside me and swish the comb in that. If there is any detergent in the water (which is highly likely given the hair products you have traces of in te individual's hair) then any beasties will sink and drown. Just swish the comb and look at it carefully to make sure you have got everything out of it.
What sort of comb to use - ALWAYS use a wide-toothed comb first, a detangler. Get all the hair detangled and lying straight. Then I use a PLASTIC fine toothed comb to get the lice. Once you have covered the entire scalp, change direction. Again use the detangler comb to achieve this, before beginning again with the fine tooth comb.
Once you have gone over the scalp with the plastic fine-toothed comb and think you have all the lice, go back over the scalp with the metal-toothed egg comb.
By the way, as soon as you find lice, go get the pesticides. Only unless there are serious risks, should you avoid this stage.
If you do get to the pesticide stage, do not count on the pesticides to kill lice/eggs. But they DO have a "knock-down" effect which will kill some of the beasties and slow down the rest (makes them sick, if nothing else) which makes it a lot easier for you to find them and catch them.
Finally - to check a head, use daylight. Even a dull day in winter is more effective than a handy desk lamp. I think it's got something to do with the broader range of wavelengths from sunlight.
That website - it had different intervals for checking hair. It also said that pesticides don't work. Well, they do. Just not 100%, necessarily.
My own recommendation - do the comb through again (conditioner only if you are worried about chemicals, but go carefully because the little beggars can be lively) EVERY 6 DAYS. And if you find live animals, use pesticide again.
You can stop when you have a clear run. But chances are the child is still likely to be at risk of reinfestation (unless the whole school gets treated at the same time), so a fortnightly conditioner check is always a good idea. We sit the kid in front of the TV with towels around them, after having shampooed hair coated with conditioner. Hair needs to be damp at least. And you don't hot wash clothing or towels, just dump the stuff in the laundry. Lice can't travel far, they die away from body heat. Hair brushes etc (hats, hair scrunchies etc) can be bagged and put in the freezer for a couple of hours. Overnight if you're really paranoid, but seriously, a couple of hours will definitely do the trick. Hey, a fridge would do it.
There is a "natural alternative" to pesticides in ti-tree oil, but from personal experience, although I swear by ti-tree oil in so many uses, lice could drink it and not suffer. We were on holidays in Queensland, had been for a fortnight, putting daily applications of NEAT ti-tree oil on difficult child 3's head to try to heal a nasty scalp wound he had been picking at for months. He had not been at school for a month, but we found nits and lice one day, realised he'd had the infestation for ages (range of different ages of lice indicating multiple generations). And they'd all been exposed to daily pure ti-tree oil. So commercial preparations that use a fraction of the amount we'd been using are not going to work. But ti-tree oil can help soothe the scalp inflamed from the rough combing.
That day in Queensland, we'd been about to go to a market I desperately wanted to see. We dashed out, bought the chemical (a foam shampoo this time) then did the treatment. Fifteen minutes on the hair (while he watched cable TV in a sunny corner of the room) then the comb through. I had the full comb-through done in half an hour and we were on the road, 45 minutes after we'd found the first louse. difficult child 3 had been de-loused thoroughly and when we got home I de-bugged his hair by hand (ie removing what eggs I could find) in the last of the daylight. We did the next treatment 6 days later, caught no lice at all, not even baby lice which meant we had got them all first time round PLUS the chemical had killed any eggs I had missed (and you can never count on getting all the eggs).
So if you're thorough, you can get them all first time. But you do need to check. And keep checking. Because other parents are not so vigilant as you.
Warn your kids to stay away from sharing dress-up clothes, especially hats, at school. Never share combs or brushes (except nit combs, and combs you have personally checked or shoved in the freezer). easy child picked up her first dose of nits from dress-up hats at after school care when she was 5 years old.
Marg
