How to Blitz Nits (and other nasties) – a Mumsnet Pocket Guide

For six glorious weeks we’ve been playing in the garden, taking day trips and enjoying the lazy (if not particularly hot) days of summer. Next week, we go back to school – which means uniforms, smart shoes, brushed hair and… checking for nits on a regular basis. Not my favourite job – especially when you find them!

Mumsnet have just released a brilliant new pocket guide book designed to help parents not only with nits but also other nasties that often show their faces in the childhood years. Such delights as ringworm, verrucas and molluscum are featured in this guide, all explanations of what they are, and handy tips for getting rid of them.

What’s great about this book is that it’s not just one person’s ideas for getting rid of the pests that can make a home in our children’s bodies; it’s crowd sourced from Mumsnetters, and so is packed with tons of first-hand experience from mums on the front line of paediatric pest control.

S had nits last school year; they made their way around the school and several children had them more than once. In retrospect, I think we got off lightly – but that didn’t stop me from being absolutely horrified! I think nits is, out of all of the nasties kids can get, the universal one we all end up having to deal with at some point, isn’t it. I found this chapter very useful then, and will no doubt be re-reading it in a few short weeks!

There’s also a chapter on “Foreign Objects” – those things that children insist on inserting into orifices. During the last week of summer term, I was summoned to school to collect a rather sheepish-looking S who had managed to get a stone stuck in her ear – so I did find this chapter rather amusing.

This is one of those books you put on your shelf… and pray you will never need to take it down! But we all know that when you have children, you will at some point end up needing to read the Vomit chapter at the very least. Things like nits, conjunctivitis and verrucas are just par for the course when raising small people. This book is not so much like a written version of that panicked call to your mum – it’s like the written version of a panicked call to everyone’s mum. Last time I called my mum for help with this sort of thing she replied with oh… I can’t remember what I did when that happened! My youngest sister is 22 so her experience is not exactly recent – so this book fills that gap nicely. There’s nothing worse than needing help with something, asking a question on Facebook or Mumsnet and then sitting there, refreshing your page and waiting for a response – now I can just find the easy-to-spot bright yellow book on the shelf!

How to Blitz Nits (and other nasties) is available from Amazon now, priced £8.99.

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Note: I was sent this book for the purposes of review, however all words and opinions are my own.

Thanks for reading.

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