ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

Holy crap, guys. Henry was sent home today because LICE. *shudder*

being bald has its advantages

oh man

my cousin had lice when we were kids. my aunt freaked out & shaved his head bald, it was a weird time

my wife is SO paranoid about lice. I probably shouldn't go into it.

the little combs & head-medicine & general panic always freaked me out

I got lice from my friend's kiddo! I know all about the lice! Ask away!

The best part about my lice story is that I hired a company called. . .

Lice Happens

https://licehappens.com/

My coworker's kids got lice on Thursday. Apparently half the class was infected because they went to a birthday party at a laser tag place and used the dress up stuff there.

Anyway her husband took her kids to a salon that specializes in lice removal for $75/hour.

We happened to have our firm holiday party that night and she opted to go despite the fancy lice salon saying she probably had lice, too. None of us would sit next to her.

Lice don't jump! Unless you planning on rubbing heads with her, you'd be fine.

Our housesitter and her newphew ended up getting lice this summer like two days after they left our place - so it was possible but highly unlikely that they would remain active and catchable. My nephews have had lice a couple of times and my sister was pretty unfazed when I asked her for advice but it was an unpleasant couple of days while we were waiting to see if we ended up getting them.

being bald has its advantages

I pointed this out to my wife, like "hey at least I'll be safe, I'm bald!" which did absolutely nothing to make her feel better about the situation.

Too bad their isn't a kid/lice equivalent to the gel that goes on the back of cats' necks to keep fleas away

My dad told me on his recent visit here that my mom didn't send me to a private elementary school on scholarship because when she went to visit there was a lice breakout and she was grossed out. We got lice anyway in public school! Thanks for being squeamish and ruining i mean altering the course of my life, mom (I also don't really trust my dad's memory tbh)

A has been in daycare since September and I have had all the colds and yet they still keep making more

I did suggest shaving his head but he freaked 'all my friends will laugh at me!!!' The vanity of a 6 year old. We did the whole medicated shampoo and then the live comb. There were only about 10 of them but at least 100 eggs so I guess we got it before it got really nasty. PP took him to a hairdresser yesterday who said its illegal (!!) for them the cut hair with live in it so she did a thorough check a said there were no bugs but some eggs are still there so she cut his hair anyway. He has the most terrible terrible bites behind his ear and at the nape of his neck, poor kiddo. Has stopped us from calling him 'bughead' though. Anyway we have to repeat the whole medicated shampoo deal in 10 days. And you should see out laundry right now. Clothes a bedding and pillows piled 6 ft high.

I don't know why my autocorrect changes 'lice' to 'live'. Maybe my typing was just crappy.

Oh Robyn some Frontline would be awesome :)

Quince....how long until you were live a egg free??

CLEAN HAIR! Lice like clean hair, at least that's what my mum promised me
All kids get nits, right? /realengland

A has been in daycare since September and I have had all the colds and yet they still keep making more

truth bomb.
J has been in about 4 days and this has overlapped with eternal cold, ear infection, me and OH having eternal colds, teething, no healing sleep for anyone so double eternal colds, plus separation anxiety crap and me going back to work on 3 hours sleep.

I am genuinely considering giving up work, life's too short for this crap, but then we'd have to move and no.

Sunny, I caught my lice waaaaaay early. Like, the day after I getting home from visiting the adorable little vermin carriers. I have really dark hair, and a couple of nits right along the hairline of my forehead stood out. I could not believe it! Of course I freaked and spent a gazillion dollars to have a Lice Happens lady come to my house and manually comb through--I went with that option after reading the American Academy for Pediatrics treatment guidelines. No medicated stuff, just an extremely thorough nit-picking.

The lady only found one buggie and not very many nits. That little lice bitch must have hopped on me preggers and gotten started laying right away. I followed up with daily combing for 10 days as recommended by Lice Happens. That did the trick. It helped that I hadn't been in my house with lice for very long, also I was living alone at the time and didn't have to deal with the pass-it-around-the-family situation.

lice are pretty fascinating, they only have to be impregnated again and that's it for life, they can keep laying and laying.

We just use a nitty gritty comb and conditioner now, we had a period of pretty much immediate reinfestation as someone else in A's class wasn't being treated, so combing every bath time was the only way. I dread Molly getting them again, having to comb her long curly hair was quite literally torture, the only way we got through it was by her mainlining youtube while I did it. Had to learn to switch off so cookie swirl C didn't send me loopy.

This seems to have kept them at bay since she started school (famous last words....) http://www.nittygritty.co.uk/products/54/nitty_gritty_defence_spray/

We just dealt with our first bout of pinkeye. Not looking forward to the inevitable lice.

It's maybe not inevitable. I never got it.

we haven't gotten it either!

of course my wife made everybody go to the de-lousing "Hairy Fairies" twice anyway

I never got it either but my mom was definitely into the tight braids for that very reason.
Weird thing is that no kids in Henry's class have them, Beatrice doesn't have them and somehow I managed to avoid them even though H ends up in bed with me every single night.

My mom did say that she heard hair product - gel, hairspray, mousse - keep the suckers at bay. That's just moms and grandmas talking though so who knows.

Is "Hairy Fairies" in the Castro or what?

haha I think it's in SOMA someplace

So unrelated to lice, and not something I have to worry about until at least next year, but I'm curious - how do you all handle the whole Santa Claus thing?

One one hand, it's part of American Christmas, not something you can really avoid, kids get excited about it, it seems like it would be kind of fun to carry on the ruse for the kid, etc. On the other hand, as a militant disbeliever in anything remotely supernatural, I feel bad about lying and scamming children with a fraudulent story and contributing to belief in magic and superstition and ghosts and such.

I really don't want to be THAT joyless guy who ruins Christmas for my kid who then ruins it for every other kid he tells at school, and I seemed to turn out OK after finding out that Santa didn't exist.

we don't do Santa Claus at our house. presents come from people, people that require thank yous.

being Jewish this was not a problem for me. My wife was raised in a Catholic family but it is def not Catholic, and the only Xmas traditions she cares about maintaining are the tree (she has a little fake one with tons of family heirloom ornaments) and baking cookies. Our kids have never cared or been interested in Santa.

We did Santa (and Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy) until a friend spoiled it a few months ago. They never really believed in God, though (cuz that's ridiculous :P ). Once they figured it out, I told them that Santa was actually adults in their life who wanted to give them more presents, so they were cool with it.

I think pp was anti-Santa I. The beginning and I was definitely anti tooth fairy and Easter bunny but our kids have been in daycare and school from day dot and what it really came down to was that if we told our kids Santa, toothy and bunny weren't really they would surely tell their friends and fuck it up for those southern Christian families. So for the greater good lie lie lie IMO

Despite being unhelpfully told santa isnt real by his mum, the 7yo has chosen to not believe her, and thinks he still does, heh.

I believed in Santa til I was 11

Took some doing, what with being chased around the school by kids yelling SANTAS DEAD SANTAS DEAD ;_;

LOL yeah I copped a lot of mockery for insisting santa was real until at least 4th-5th grade :/

some girl went to far as to tell me Santa died in an accident & it's really his brother

We did this last year so hopefully it was scarring enough that she won't want anything to do with Santa.

http://www.ivyheath.com/Year-Two/Twelve-to-Fifteen-Months/i-sGPKv9M/0/M/IMG_8274-M.jpg

When I came into my son's life at age 4 (about a year before the step-parent adoption), his mother was gearing up to tell him that there was no such thing as Santa. I objected strenuously to this, arguing that "kids need to grow up with magic in their lives" "it's part of the culture we grow up in" etc. etc. So we went about keeping up the Santa myth, and my wife added lots of other weird supernatural phenomena (for about a year my wife had him convinced that he was an alien and a little antenna grew out of his head when he slept, also that bad kids get left in the woods and turned into trolls). He kept believing until last Christmas, at age ten. I guess he figured it out with the help of some school friends or something. He felt pretty betrayed about us not being honest with him because we've always been a very open family. Why did we lie to him for all those years?

So in retrospect, we could have done without the Santa thing. I was discussing this with a colleague yesterday and she was like "Yeah, I grew up Jewish, so I just enjoyed running around knowing something other kids didn't know." Like, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal.

I'm not sure what my younger kid's take on Santa is. I'm definitely not taking an aggressively pro-Santa stance this time around though.

we never really did Santa "metaphysically" but writing like "from Santa" etc is no big deal. I mean still the tooth fairy visits because it's code for "mom gonna give us money"

Our son believes in Santa purely so I can threaten to phone him to report any bad behaviour.

arguing that "kids need to grow up with magic in their lives"

This is partly why I'm a fan of Santa. I remember Decembers from my youth as being a very sort of charged, magical time of year, with something mysterious and exciting in the air aside from the anticipation of presents. I have great memories of peering out windows with my cousins on Christmas eve trying to spot moving lights in the sky, and hoping to fall asleep before hearing the scrape of the sleigh on the roof. I do remember being a little bummed when I found out the truth, but it was short-lived and certainly worth it.

One year my little sister and her friend were growing skeptical, so they told me and my older sister that they'd hatched a plan to both ask Santa for his autograph in a note that they would leave with the milk, cookies, and carrots they set out for him. Later they'd compare signatures and would know the truth. We tipped off our dad and he went over to the friend's house late Christmas eve after everyone had gone to bed and signed the friend's note so they would match. It blew their minds.

I do try to avoid the naughty-and-nice/the elves are watching you aspect of it with my kids.

We are pro-Santa because they have cousins who currently believe Santa exists; I intend to pitch him as more a state of mind/feeling rather than an actual person, though.

"Every December, Santa possesses us and makes us buy you presents, but only if you've been good. Sleep well!"

I've been telling Ivy Santa is "the Christmas mascot," and giving her little mini TED talks on What Christmas Means to Our Family to which she responds with a thoughtful and studied, "Up! Up! Elmo! Crackers! CRACKERS! CRAAAACKERRSSSSS!"

My parents are horrified that we don't intend to make Santa a thing, or that we don't have a tree, and are trying to side step our chosen traditions by making a big deal out of their tree and acting like Santa is real. When Ivy's a little older I'm going to tell her that her grandparents never learned Santa wasn't real and not to spoil it for them.

When I'm a little older maybe I'll gin up enough courage to tell my parents to back the fuck up.

we lost control of whether santa is a thing a long time ago - it is not up to us - though we are occasionally solicited for advice about his methods and whether he is real, which we sidestep as wryly as possible

i mean we never intended for octonauts and ninjago to become a thing either, but despite their not-realness they play an ever-present part in our lives

BEEPS: "Can Santa read minds?"

ME: Me, playing along with the world's cruel trick on children just one more time. "Why, no, of course he can't."

lol ninjago

i've recently heard crap parents feed their kids like "santa has a meeting with all the parents"

that's what the santa myth needs. corporatizing. "every year we pay into a fund santa has set up and if you're good mommy & daddy will get a return when you're 18 to pay for college"

"Santa left you this Powerpoint presentation so you can understand your deliverables this season."

I kind of want to do that now