If your elementary school student gets the notice that someone in their class has lice during these next few weeks, this could be perfect timing for a lice outbreak during winter break. This notice could be alerting you to a single, random case of lice or it could be an actual outbreak – only time will tell!
Ask yourself where will you be and what you will be doing the last week of December. As a professional nitpicker I have gotten calls at all hours of the day. I have spent every holiday helping families deal with lice. I have also received calls from frantic moms on the beach in Hawaii, from a chartered boat on the Mediterranean and from Disney World (several times). Finding out you have lice on vacation is not ideal for so many obvious reasons. But this can be avoided with a simple five-minute head check. If you take 5 minutes to do a combing head check on your elementary school children once a week you will find lice long before you go on vacation, visit family, or have a house full of guests.
Lice is a year round problem that typically increases in occurrence 2-4 weeks after schools return from a break. If you are getting a notice, then you are clued in to the knowledge that there is lice in your close circles somewhere and you should be on alert.
Of course this is only true if it is your school’s policy to send a lice letter home at all. If it is no longer your school’s policy to send home a lice notice you can call or email your child’s class directly. Or you can utilize our very helpful Heads Up anonymous email notification to let people know about your lice without letting them know who you are:)
