Any mother who’s noticed their child coming home from school scratching their head understands the panic that is felt when you realize that head lice has entered your home. No matter how hard you may work to ensure that your house is clean and that pets are well groomed, head lice can be extremely contagious and pass from one person on to another with the greatest of ease. Your automatic response may be to rush to the grocery store to purchase any number of treatments to kill and remove the head lice from your home, but give one of these at home remedies for head lice a shot before you empty your wallet.

To first diagnose head lice, some of the symptoms can include an itchy scalp, red bumps on the scalp and neck and finding little white sacks called nits (lice eggs) attached to hairs near the scalp. If you do in fact have a lice infestation, the first suggested home remedy for head lice would be to shampoo the hair and then comb with a lice comb. You may want to follow through with tweezers to remove any live lice that can be found. Items that you can find at home such as olive oil, Vaseline and mayonnaise can be used as a shampoo to smother the lice. Its also been suggested to rub these ingredients through the hair, cover with a shower cap and leave it on overnight, but this can also cause quite a mess. Tea tree oil, which can typically be found at most local drugstores, can also be used as a home remedy for head lice to kill/remove the lice.

Hopefully, one of these treatments will work for you but remember to be patient, it may take a couple days of repeating the treatment before the lice is completely removed. If these head lice home remedy treatments don’t work for you, you can purchase over the counter medications or consult your doctor for a prescribed ointment to help in the removal of head lice.