However, one Aussie mum has taken a much different road - she doesn’t want to hurt the nits at all, reportskidspot.com.au.
And the reason behind it will have you scratching your head.
A worried parent wrote to an advice column about her neighbour and how she won’t treat her child’s nits because she’s vegan - and doesn’t want to kill the lice.
She explains: “My seven-year-old daughter is best friends with the girl next door, whose family are vegan. That’s fine, we respect their choice … my problem is that recently, this otherwise delightful child was at our house and scratching furiously, and I discovered she was crawling with head lice.”
After warning the girl’s mum about the nits, the mum said she knew about them but didn’t want to hurt the pests.
Usually, when your child gets head lice, you desperately try every method to kill them. Photo / Getty Images
The mum further explained she had been combing the lice into the garden where they had the best chance of survival, which left the concerned poster horrified.
She asked the advice columnist what her next port of call should be. “I don’t want to separate the kids, but there’s no way ‘combing them into the garden’ is going to work (industrial-grade pesticide barely works) and I don’t want my daughter covered in vermin.”
The agony aunt was candid with the worried mother, saying that the other mum was a “sanctimonious twit”.
She added that the vegan mum was actually a “monster” who was sentencing the nits to a “slow and painful” death as there is no way they would live long in the backyard.
The agony aunt told the poster what she really thought – that the other mum was a “sanctimonious twit”. Photo / Getty Images
She then quipped that the poster should take matters into her own hands and invite the nit-ridden girl to “play hairdressers” and remove the lice herself.
However, she was worried that this would upset the lice-activist mum - should she find out.
