Hmmm had an email from playgroup warning of the presence of nits and threadworms … never heard of the latter and was traumatised as a child by the former due to my absurd quantities of thick, curly hair.
Dashed to the chemist to find out what to do … and came away with a nit comb (which I’ve now lost).
Told her father, who twenty minutes later said, “oh there’s something crawling in her hair”, and got all agitated … there wasn’t, it was a bit of banana from her breakfast.
Funny the reaction it seems to bring in adults … mine is mainly along the lines of, “oh that would be annoying”, and also selfishly, “she’d better not give them to me” (even thicker more unruly hair than when I was younger now … think I’d have to shave it all off as I’d never get a nit comb through it!), but some people seem to get very stressed about the whole idea. One of her Godmothers flinched visibly and said, “ohhh no that would be terrible” and another friend said she is quite obsessive about checking her children on a nightly basis.
I was discussing this with a friend, and mother of another small girl at the same playschool, and she very reassuringly said she remembered Sunday evening nit checks from her mother throughout childhood and that nits were a regular occurrence in their home. We both decided it would be deeply embarrassing going to have a haircut and being found to have them, and also would be a social faux pas to be out for dinner and have someone else spot something crawling in our hair …
I guess the constantly circulate colds and coughs have now been added to by more visible bugs and they all need to be watched out for … and I’m not looking forward to small person coming home with them. She’s got such fine straight hair and is great at shouting, “Get out snaggles, go away snaggles” for me when I have to comb out any tangles, but I’m not so sure how she’ll be shouting, “go away nits” if and when it comes to the nit comb moment.
… and as I said, I’ll just have to shave my head if they come anywhere near me …
Not so keen on the idea of threadworms though … how very horrible.
Ahh the joys of toddler parenting!
