Nit Picking: How to Get to Grip With Nits

Many parents will experience the delights of their child picking up nits at some point in their school lives – sometimes more than once. DAD.info’s Simon Harris scratches his head and looks at some natty solutions…  

Ahhh, back to school. It’s that wonderful time of year that puts a smile on our faces. New uniform, satchel and shiny shoes. Off they go, skipping through the school gates, but when the home-time bell goes, our little darlings come out with a few more things skipping around .. on their heads. Arrrggghhh. The curse of those little scalp ticklers doesn’t take long to hit us all. Nits. Goddammit. Nits.

We’ve been infested with these blighters more times than I care to count. It has driven us crazy. The first couple of times, we just grabbed whatever product the chemist had to treat our daughter Mary, and we didn’t give it much thought. However, the more we needed to attack, the more thought we put into our arsenal. When my wife Jacqui was pregnant and then breastfeeding, we discovered that many products were out of bounds, which made us consider just what the heck is in this stuff that we’re so freely slapping on our kids’ heads. Because nits are so common, we just hadn’t thought about the obvious: these products are full of chemicals to kill these pests… er, so these products are actually pesticides! Not only that, nits are fighting back. Super nits. They’re getting more and more resistant to these chemicals so it doesn’t make sense to keep using them because they’re not very effective anyway.

Three mums who were as frustrated as us with all the lotions, potions and empty promises out there, decided to unhatch (sorry) their own invention. Nitty Gritty. It’s different. This lotion is totally natural; made from safe ingredients of lovely oils and no chemicals.

And the comb… let’s talk about that Nitty Gritty comb. It’s in a totally different league from the others. A super comb to tackle the super nits. It comes with a lifetime guarantee, so these ladies are pretty confident it isn’t going to snap, loose teeth or disappoint you. Considering how rife nits are, a comb that’s in it for the long haul is the first thing you need. Stainless steel with super long, spirally grooved teeth and a decent sized handle to get your grip on. It feels solid – and really is the only thing to get through Mary’s thick curly locks and sweep up all in its path… lice, eggs and empty shells. 

Now that we’re confident we’ve got the all clear, we’ve been using Nitty Gritty’s Defence Spray every morning. It keeps her hair shiny, untangled and smelling sweet – but more importantly, the smell repels nits so they’re not tempted to jump on board. So far, so good. I’m sure nothing totally guarantees they won’t return, but my weekly check with the super comb has so far proven to be all good on Mary’s hood.