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Trying to understand why the hell my daughter did this to herself
This past weekend, I noticed that my high school age daughter seemed to be scratching her head quite a bit. I asked her what the problem was and she calmly relayed to me that she had head lice. I was shocked and alarmed, of course, and couldn't understand how she could be so casual about this. I asked her why she hadn't said anything. Her answer? She had deliberately contracted them.
A few weeks back, it seems, a friend had confided in my daughter that she had head lice. My daughter expressed that she was curious to know what having lice is like and so the friend agreed to infect her. They then sat on the friend's bed, back to back with their heads resting against each other, while they listened to music.
Naturally, I put an end to this and helped her with disinfecting her hair, clothes, and bed linens. I'm still not sure we got them all. I'm knocking on wood, hoping we did.
My daughter has no history of self-harm, so I don't think that was her intention. She says it was just out of curiosity. I know kids will do crazy things sometimes, but I don't know what to make of this. Obviously I'm concerned that there could be some deeper issue here. Could this really be nothing more than a dumb teenage decision?
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Well...you are concerned about potentially deeper issues? If this were a true story, so would I be concerned. IS IT? Either your daughter is incredibly naive and immature, (you didn't give her age), or you have concocted a fictitious tale , for some unfathomable reason? I tend to vote for the latter, as I couldn't believe anyone, including a misinformed, inexperienced kid, could possibly be that dumb. Forgive me, please, I don't intend to be rude, but I, for one, just can't buy it. If I am correct, then you might wish to explore some of your own personal issues, as to why you would post such a thing. If I'm wrong, I apologize, and hope that others will provide you with some meaningful guidance .~Dr. Stephanie
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Sounds like stories my son in law told of himself when younger. He blindfoleed himself for an entire summer vacation to try to see what it was like to be blind and still have to be able to do things. At least he didn't poke his eyes out to find out. He did several other things odd like that too out of curiousity. He doesn't have mental illness today so I would have to say its not a sign of something worse. You are right that teens will do crazy things at times. Do you know why we all are like this to some extent? There is a scientific reason. Not trying to make excuses, seriously.
Bodies of humans come to their mature state long before the pre frontal lobe or the brain is mature. It isn't complete until the mid twenties on average. This means teens are already compromised in their thinking ability as far as the things that the pre frontal lobe governs. So they lack ability to see forward to possible outcomes and how it might affect others, do not make good judgements and so on. Read about that all here:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
So it is a given that your daughter will continue to do crazy things for a while. Often some of the crazy things teens do, result in their death at worst possiblilites. What I have found is that it is best to teach our teens to use us (the parents) as sounding boards. The dictionary says a sounding board is a person you share your ideas with before making a decision to get another view point. I did this with my kids. They learned that what ever little idea came to their mind, to tell me about it and I would share any plusses or minusses with them. I could tell them also repercussions down the road from continuing on with their idea. Yes, there were times that something was not deemed important enough to share with me and they had to suffer the consequences. Instead of getting angry, I would sit with them, and tell them that they wouldn't have had to go through it all and be miserable if they had just used me as a sounding board.
I then patiently have them imagine as I retell the story as it would have gone if they had come to me first. My lice experiences are different than yours but if I had your experience, I would explain that I understand curiosity and in some situations in the past, it led people to invent an important item. But in some cases it is not a good idea as you now have found out. If you were able to look down the road at consequences, you would realize there would be missed school for you, missed work for me as I have to labor over your hair killing lice and searching for nits on the hairs every day for a week. I would have to bag up all their stuffed toys to place in the attic for weeks, maybe a month, and I would have to wash pillows and all their bedding and likely have a profession come in to clean the couch and other upholstered chairs with hot steam to kill the lice. So it would take up lots of time and lots of money sa well, all to find out what it would feel like. I want you to know I dont blame you for a bad decision because the front part of your brain, able to weigh consequences to decisions and making good judgements, is not mature yet, so you wont' be able to make adult decisions until your mid 20s and even then as you are just starting out, it is best to still run ideas past other adults before you make a final decision.
Something like that is what I would have said to my daughter. My troubles were in grade school where my daughters caught lice over and over, each school year. The school nurse spent time checking all kids in each class. They had an epidemic and I figure they did not check out the adults and teachers so it kept being passed back to the kids. I found that the lice medicine in the bottle did not work because lice in our area had mutated to be immune to it. It wouldn't kill them. So I read somewhere that lice can hold their breath up to 2 hours and that using mayonaisse to smother the childs head with really thick (I used a whole big jar) past the time they can hold their breath would work in killing them. As mayo heats up, it stinks so I put a plastic shower hat on and let my kid just sit and watch Tv all day. It takes lots of cleaning to get out all the grease after but it works if you ever have such difficulty killing them.
The nits I found are not always visible, the mature older nits darken and grow bigger. I sectioned the hair into tiny bits and rubber banded them with those tiny bands. Then I worked on one with an extremely bright light close to the area I was working on. I placed a roll of tape with the sticky side on the outside around the wrist of my non dominent hand. With the other, I searched for and pulled any visible nits all the way to the end of a strand of hair, the comb never got all of them because the younger nits glued to hair strands were too small yet and would pass thru the comb. I would place the nit I got onto the tape and continue working.
Eventually I had to pull my kids out of that school and I let the principal hear hell for it but put the grade school aged in a K to 8 grade school where my oldest was in 7th grade. All of a sudden, they never caught lice again. Its easy with a boy, just shave their head, but with girls and I had 3, it is a big chore. I am sorry you have had to go through this. Show her the article on the frontal lobe so she knows its not all her fault but the fault of an immature brain, no matter how mature her body is looking. This one fact I found was a big deal in helping my kids make a whole lot less of dumb mistakes.
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