It’s easy to confuse a condition like dandruff for lice. Once you know what head lice look like on a child’s head, you’ll be able to tell the difference more easily.

Being able to identify head lice will also help you make an informed choice about treatment. Usually, you only need to treat your child with a lice shampoo when you see live lice. If you only see lice eggs and no live lice, you just need to carefully remove them.

This article has pictures of what head lice look like. You will learn how to tell if your child has live lice or just lice eggs. Once you know for sure that your child has lice, you can get treatment.

Confused because you can’t see any lice? Believe it or not, there was a large, live louse on their head right before the picture was taken. It goes to show just how tricky it can be to find lice, especially on a child with long hair.

The texture, color, and thickness of your child’s hair can also make it harder to spot lice. A louse might be easier to see on the head of a child with lighter, thinner, hair than in a child with dark, coarse, thick hair.

You can clearly see the six legs that a louse has. If you magnified the image more, you might be able to see the small claws on the end of the legs that lice use to grasp the hair.

As you can see in the image above, a female head louse is a little “fatter” than a male.

This image of a head louse is magnified, but you can use the strand of hair next to it for comparison. That will give you a sense of just how big head lice really are.

Lice eggs are called nits. They are small, oval-shaped, usually a yellowish-white color, and are firmly attached to the sides of hair shafts.

The terms can be confusing because some people only use “nits” to refer to empty egg casings while “lice eggs” is used for eggs that can hatch (viable eggs).

However, other people use “nits” to refer to both viable lice eggs and empty egg casings.

Having nits does not necessarily mean that your child has live lice because some nits are actually empty egg casings. Others are dead and only have non-infective lice embryos inside.

Nits that are close to your child’s scalp are the most likely to be infective. They’re also the ones that are thought to hatch into live lice—a process that takes six to nine days.

Continuing to get new nits even after you have removed them from your child’s hair is also a sign that your child has live lice and needs lice treatment.

A live louse will typically lay up to eight eggs a day. If your child only has a few nits, they likely do not have an active lice infestation.

In fact, the AAP now states that “no healthy child should be excluded from or allowed to miss school time because of head lice.”

This might come as a surprise to caregivers who have had their kids sent home from school because of head lice.

The picture above shows the three stages of the head lice life cycle with a penny to make it easy to compare each size.

The three stages of the head lice life cycle are:

Egg or nitNymphAdult louse

If your child has lice, try not to panic. Getting the right lice treatment can stop the lice life cycle and clear up the infestation.

A mature or adult head louse can lay up to 10 eggs or nits each day. The nits hatch in about seven to 12 days. Baby lice (nymphs) are about as big as a pinhead when they hatch but quickly grow into adult lice (in about seven days). In just a few days, adult lice are ready to mate and start the cycle over again. Lice have a lifespan of three to four weeks.

Summary

Looking at pictures of live lice and nits can help you learn to spot them on your child’s head.

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Knowing what head lice look like will also help you tell them from other conditions that kids get. For example, you can easily mistake flakes of dandruff for a head lice infestation if you don’t know what to look for.

If you spot lice eggs in your child’s hair, go ahead and pick them out. If they have live adult lice, you’ll need to use a prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) treatment to kill them. You may need to repeat these steps until all the lice are gone.

Feeling a tickling sensation in the hairFrequent itchingDifficulty sleeping (head lice get more active in the dark)Sores on the head from scratching that can get infected

It’s less common for lice to spread through shared clothes or belongings, but it is possible. Pets such as dogs and cats do not spread head lice.