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Comment by CodeWriter23 | Hacker News Reader

My wife's research revealed an important fact, lice cannot survive for more than 48 hours without a human host. So we let DD sleep on a cot in a different room for two days to clear her bed.

As for DD (and DW, I get a free pass thanks to baldness) she makes some kind of solution with tea tree oil and uses a comb. The lice can't stand tea tree oil and abandon ship.

My wife says mayonnaise didn't work, but I've heard testimonial from other parents this is very effective. Mayo plus a shower cap plus keep it in overnight suffocates the little varmints to death.

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And I would like to add, though my grandfather's effective choice in treatment killed the lice instantly, getting one's hair washed with kerosene is extremely painful and I'm pretty sure it killed the top layer of skin in my scalp as I was shedding dead skin for about two weeks.

So don't do that.

And also, don't let your kid do a stage performance of "Hats for Sale", where they mix all their hats together in a box and wear them. Not sure what the drama coach was thinking, but the entire 2nd grade had a lice outbreak after that. True story.

> And I would like to add, though my grandfather's effective choice in treatment killed the lice instantly, getting one's hair washed with kerosene is extremely painful and I'm pretty sure it killed the top layer of skin in my scalp as I was shedding dead skin for about two weeks.

The anti-lice treatments like Goldgeist are equally bad.

What I found out that works well without massively hurting your skin is hair dye. No lice survives H2O2, and it’s actually far less painful and destructive than Goldgeist etc. But obviously, you can’t bleach your 2yos hair, this is just something I found out worked for me (after my little sister brought lice home once)

This is sort of an aside, but when I first became a parent 6 years ago and I started reading "DD," "DS," "LO" etc all over the internet in parenting forums, it was my first indication that all parents (myself included) have lost their minds.

What an odd shorthand convention.

I don't think geeks get to throw stones on shorthand.

For Mb vs MB vs MiB alone we've lost any and all credibility.

Do you have a better proposal?

Dear Daughter, Dear Son, Dear Wife? I don't know what LO might be.

Little One.

Yes, yes, yes, me neither

Funny enough, mayo worked for me when it seemed nothing else did. Not tea tree oil or the over the counter shampoos you can buy. I guess just keep trying everything until you find what works in your situation.

You're absolutely correct, iterate until you find the solution that works. My DW made her own tea tree oil concoction from full strength tea tree oil plus coconut oil as a carrier oil. Pure TT oil will burn your skin, so yeah get informed and be careful.

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