Today’s guest blogger, Kathleen, gives you something to scratch think about …

No one wants to admit her kids have lice. No matter how many times the school nurses and Web sites and doctors all say, “Anyone can get lice. It has nothing to do with hygiene,” it’s still an embarrassment to admit there are vermin crawling on your kids’ heads. In an effort to help other Wise Women who many be confronted with this problem, I will, however, take one for the team and admit that my daughters have had lice – not once but twice.

About five years ago, one of my daughters caught lice at school. And of course once one child gets it, you can pretty much guarantee your other child is going to get it too. I fought that lice long and hard. For months I was dousing my kids’ heads with harsh chemicals, “guaranteed to kill lice and their nits.” Um, yea, right. Eventually I did manage to get rid of the lice. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pretty. But I got rid of it and crossed my fingers they’d never come in contact with it again.

Fast forward to this past spring. I’m drying my youngest daughter’s hair after a bath and suddenly discover things crawling on her scalp. “Um, does anyone at school have lice?” I asked her. “No, but some kids at after-school care do.”

Oh, great. Here we go again.

I tried what had worked before (lice-treatment shampoo every other day, even though they say you only need to do it every seven to 10 days). No go. I sat them in front of the TV and combed and combed and combed those nits out. No go. I washed all the bedding, bagged up all their stuffed animals, banned sleepovers. No go.

No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get rid of that damn lice. Every time I’d think I’d taken care of the problem, I’d discover they were back (or maybe I never fully got rid of them in the first place). I was convinced the only thing that would work is to wait until school ended and they weren’t around a whole bunch of kids, who were clearly passing lice back and forth to each other.

Ah, the best laid plans… The end of school didn’t make any difference either. And now we’re approaching time for Girl Scout sleepaway camp – where they check your daughter’s head for lice as soon as she gets off the bus and send her home if they find a single nit. Trust me, they were going to find significantly more than a “single” nit on my kids’ heads.

I turned to the Internet, searching, searching, searching for some miracle cure. I found better than that. I found the Lice Ladies. (OK, that’s not really their name. The business is actually called Lice Happens. They’re based in Annapolis, Maryland and you can find them at www.licehappens.com.)

I have only one thing to say about this company. These women are my saviors. They came to my house, complete with all the equipment they needed (and a ton of information to share) and spent nearly four hours picking every single solitary nit out of my kids’ hair. (And mine too, for that matter. As they said, “If more than one child in a household has lice, you can pretty much guarantee the mother has it too. But never the father.” I’ll refrain from making any comments about how clearly we moms obviously cuddle more with our children than their fathers do and thus pick up the lice as well.)

I can’t say enough wonderful things about this company. If you’re unlucky enough to run into lice and lucky enough to live in the Maryland-Virginia-DC area, give them a call as soon as you spot that first nit or lice. Don’t even waste your time trying to take care of the problem yourself. They aren’t cheap, but it’s worth every penny. Oh, and no harsh chemicals. Just all-natural products

And if you don’t live in the metro DC area, give them a call anyway. They can either give you advice over the phone or, if you’re lucky, point you in the direction of a similar company in your neck of the woods.

The true measure of success, however, is that I dropped off my youngest at Girl Scout camp yesterday afternoon – and I haven’t received a call yet telling me to come and pick her up.