By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
Linda Strand is a nit-picker — literally. She’s the owner and founder of Lice Be Gone in Short Hills. And this time of year, she’s clocking 13-hour days.
“I call the nurses in school ‘the gatekeeper’. And there’s no gatekeeper during the summer, so kids have been on vacation with other kids and they go to sleepover and day camp so it’s like a breeding ground,” Strand said.
September is Lice Prevention Month. And knowing how bugs travel is half the battle.
“It’s really head-to-head contact. It’s not like you went to a movie theater or to a hotel. They’re not bed bugs, they don’t embed. They’re not fleas that jump and hop,” Strand said.
So sharing hats and hairbrushes should be avoided. But also beware of less obvious offenses — like pushing heads together to take a selfie. As with so many things, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
“I always tell people, there’s no reason for a whole family to have head lice. I think that people need to get in the habit of taking a metal lice comb and washing the kid’s hair up so everything is out, putting conditioner in and combing around. We call it a ‘wet check’. If they do it once a week, not every day, once a week, then there’s a good chance that they’ll find it. If they’re not successful at finding it, they’ll find it by week two,” Strand said.
Strand doesn’t use chemicals, just conditioner. She says hair has to be combed through carefully either way, and products aren’t 100 percent effective. There’s also the matter of bugs that have been dubbed “super lice” — ones that have been found to be resistant to chemicals.
“I think over time they’ve adapted themselves. I mean they’ve been around millions of years, so they’re pretty adaptive,” she said.
Still people sometimes delay addressing the issue, hoping the itchy skin stems from something else.
“I think it’s a lot of shame and I think people internalize it. I think it’s more the parents. If they’re smart, they’ll try to get rid of that shame and that bad feeling and they’ll let everybody know that’s been with their child because otherwise they risk their child getting it back again,” Strand said.
Lice Be Gone has a double and triple checking system. It can take a couple of hours.
“When we’re done with little pieces, we check each other’s work. And then we wash the hair, we dry it and then we go again dry,” Strand said.
But eradication takes care of a problem that would grow exponentially.
Strand says each of the bugs can potentially 100 eggs in a month.
So if your child is scratching his or her head more than usual or a friend or schoolmate has lice, it’s time to take out the comb and check.