Dandruff in a child: causes and treatment, how to quickly get rid of it, cure dry scalp, what to do about the problem in children of different ages, in newborns and infants, children 5–8 years old, teenagers 9

What is dandruff

Dandruff is dead epidermal cells that have accumulated on the surface of the skin. The main reason for the problem is an imbalance in the production of sebaceous secretions, accelerated division of epidermal cells , as a result they accumulate, causing a lot of inconvenience to the child.

Experts distinguish two main types of dandruff:

Dry. Dandruff flakes are white, small in size, and crumble at the slightest contact. It appears due to the slow functioning of the sebaceous glands.
Fat. Dandruff flakes have a yellowish tint, are sticky, and stick together into large flakes. Oily dandruff seems to stick to the hair, making it more difficult to get rid of. The problem appears due to increased secretion production from the sebaceous glands.

A separate group identified yellow tubular dandruff in infants. There will not be any particular difficulties in treating the problem; a little attention to the baby and strict adherence to the recommendations of the attending physician are required.

Important! When combing your hair, some dandruff flakes leave the skin and fall on your shoulders and floor. But it is impossible to get rid of dandruff by combing alone; targeted complex therapy and a strict diet are required.

Symptoms of the problem developing

Symptoms of dry dandruff:

hair becomes brittle, brittle, split ends;
itching and discomfort appear;
dry, irritable skin;
redness of the skin;
Small, white specks of dust can be seen among the hair.

Oily dandruff manifests itself as follows:

hair quickly becomes oily, looks dirty and unkempt;
yellowish, large flakes are observed in the root area;
itchy head;
wounds and suppuration are formed.

Any type of dandruff is accompanied by itching. The mother’s task is to quickly respond to the problem and begin its treatment immediately so that the child does not have time to scratch the skin. This threatens the formation of wounds and their suppuration.

Causes of occurrence in children

In a newborn baby

In an infant, dandruff looks special. These are seborrheic crusts of light yellow color, they are usually located in the upper area of the head, behind the ears, in the fontanel area. When combing, their integrity is disrupted; separated scales linger in the newborn’s hair and resemble dandruff.

If seborrheic “islands” are not treated, the problem will spread further, crusts will appear on the ears and in the groin area. The complex stage of the disease is called “seborrheic eczema”.

There are several reasons for the appearance of seborrheic crust in newborns:

the delicate skin of a child is vulnerable to external factors and infection attacks;
during pregnancy, the mother had metabolic problems, which affected the development of the fetus;
The sebaceous glands of a newborn are not fully developed; it takes time to stabilize their work;
cosmetic products (shampoos, foams, soaps) are not suitable for the baby;
reaction to new foods in the diet of a nursing mother or when introducing complementary foods;
lack of vitamins and minerals in the child’s body, especially B vitamins;
the indoor microclimate is not suitable for the baby (high humidity, hot);
The baby is constantly wearing a cap, the skin does not breathe and sweats.

The body of a newborn baby reacts sensitively to any changes in climate, cosmetic skin care products, changes in the mother’s diet and foods introduced as complementary foods. Such changes are reflected in the condition of the baby’s skin.

In children from one to 10 years old

In the second year, the child has mastered many tastes, the sebaceous glands are sufficiently developed, but dandruff appears? Causes of dandruff in children aged 1 to 10 years:

improper care, shampoo, soap selected inappropriately;
unbalanced, poor nutrition, accompanying a lack of vitamins in the body, disruptions in the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract;
Dandruff in a 7–9 year old child appears due to skin diseases. Frequent culprits of flakes in the hair are seborrheic dermatitis and psoriasis;
a 5-year-old child may develop dandruff after pediculosis or helminthic infestation;
allergies to food, drugs, and care products can cause defects at any age; mothers are advised to take the body’s sensitivity more seriously;
Entering kindergarten or school is accompanied by nervous disorders and stress, and the risk of developing the disease increases. Experts note a surge in the development of dandruff against the background of emotional stress in children aged 2–3, 6–8 years;
diseases of the endocrine, digestive and nervous systems of the body cause disruption in the functioning of the sebaceous and sweat glands.

Attention! Do not miss the fact that a child can become infected after contact with a sick person, through a comb, a hat, or personal belongings. Fungal skin infections do not go away on their own, so treatment should not be delayed.

In teenagers

Dandruff in teenagers is often caused by:

changes in hormonal levels during puberty;
metabolic disorders;
allergic reaction to food, cosmetic products, medications;
stress, emotional breakdowns;
diseases of the endocrine system;
infection with fungal infections after contact with a sick person or animal;
sores, scabs on the skin;
lack of vitamins and minerals in the body; in adolescence, the child grows quickly and requires more nutritional components;
low immunity, especially after illnesses.

At the age of 11–14 years, girls think about their own appearance and begin to use styling products, curling irons, and flat irons. Such actions affect the condition of the skin; lack of proper care contributes to dry skin and the development of dandruff in adolescents.

Possible diseases

Often, the reason that a child constantly groans can be diseases that require prompt intervention from a pediatrician. It is imperative to show the baby to a doctor in order to exclude the development of complex and serious diseases, the consequences of which will affect his growth and development, both mental and physical.

These are diseases such as:

Tracheitis. Occurs due to the development of inflammation of the ciliated epithelium in the tracheal area. Usually accompanied by coughing attacks that occur when the baby is crying heavily or after running. If the disease is neglected and you do not see a doctor in time, it develops into bronchiolitis, which is much more difficult to cope with at home. Typically, coughing attacks with tracheitis intensify at night.
Nasopharyngitis. It occurs due to the development of inflammation in the nasopharynx. Accompanied by symptoms such as severe headaches, persistent runny nose, sore throat, difficulty swallowing, nasal breathing. The baby's lethargic condition and the pallor of his skin should be an alarm bell for parents, obliging them to visit a pediatrician or call him at home.
Cystic fibrosis. A hereditary disease resulting from a gene mutation. Associated symptoms are recurrent bronchitis, poor physical development, the presence of chronic sinusitis, coughing attacks, and inflammation of the respiratory organs. Similar symptoms occur with whooping cough, obstruction, and fibrosis of lung tissue. For this reason, it is extremely important to consult a doctor promptly.
Whooping cough. An infection that is bacterial in nature and affects the respiratory tract. It can cause oxygen starvation of the brain caused by collapse of the pulmonary organ. Usually detected in children aged five years, treatment is carried out only in a hospital setting, since the child must be constantly monitored not only by a pediatrician, but also by an infectious disease specialist.
Adenoiditis. It is caused by damage to the tonsils, resulting in inflammation of the pharyngeal tonsil. It is accompanied not only by coughing attacks, but also by purulent discharge from the throat and nose, increased body temperature, and difficulty breathing through the nose. Surgery is often required to correct the problem.
Bronchial asthma. The main reason for its appearance is constant bronchodilator obstruction. However, at the initial stage of development, it is often confused with a regular allergenic cough, which goes away after a course of taking antihistamines. It is worth remembering that bronchial asthma can develop in a baby if he is allergic to animal hair, pollen, chemicals, any strong odors, as well as dust particles.

In the latter case, it is especially important to consult a doctor in time, since during coughing attacks focal hypoventilation occurs in the lungs. This means that they do not receive the required amount of oxygen, which can result in asphyxia, that is, oxygen starvation.

It is important to relieve attacks, as something irreparable can happen - death.

Accompanying symptoms of the development of bronchial asthma are:

discharge of mucus from the nose when sneezing;
scratching the skin;
coughing up glassy mucous secretions.

Treatment of dandruff in a child

Dandruff in children is no less troublesome than in adults. The coordinated actions of parents, compliance with the requirements of specialists, and changes in diet and lifestyle will quickly help remove the unpleasant “snow.”

If you notice a problem in your hair, contact a specialist. He will conduct a detailed examination of the integument; be prepared for additional diagnostics and some tests. This is necessary to identify the exact cause of the problem.

Having established a diagnosis, the doctor prescribes treatment. It involves drug therapy, special hair care using medicinal cosmetics and natural remedies, and a special diet. Let's take a closer look at how to remove dandruff from a child using various methods.

How to remove scabs from a newborn

Treating dandruff in a child under one year old (crusts) is simple. Apply a little vegetable oil to the affected areas.

After some time (about 2 hours), when the crusts have softened, use a soft brush to remove them from the child’s head. Particular care should be taken on the top of the head, in the area of the fontanel.

Rinse your child's hair thoroughly so that no oil remains, which can cause the crust to reappear.

Advice. If the crust is very hard, it will take longer to soften. To do this, the affected areas are treated with oil and left overnight, and washed off in the morning.

Treatment with special drugs

You can cure dandruff in a child with the help of medicinal ointments, pastes, shampoos, and soaps. Modern pharmaceuticals offer a wide selection of medications to eliminate the problem; they instantly relieve itching, which significantly alleviates the patient’s condition. Regardless of the patient’s age, perform an allergy test the first time you use the product. Let's consider popular drugs, anti-dandruff shampoos.

Shampoo, cream "Nizoral".

The active ingredient is ketoconazole, it effectively eliminates the problem of dandruff in children, adolescents, and adults. Nizoral is used even for infants, the only condition is to avoid contact with the eyes, mouth, and nose.

External use. You need to wash your hair with Nizoral shampoo 1-2 times a week. The course of treatment is 2–4 weeks, taking into account the individual characteristics of the body.

Cream "Nizoral"

Apply an even layer to problem areas up to 2 times a day. Treatment is carried out until the symptoms of the disease are completely eliminated. The cost of Nizoral shampoo is 750 rubles, cream - 500 rubles.

Please note that there is a large selection of Nizoral analogues - Perhotal, Dermazol, Dermazol plus, Kenazol, Ebersept. They also contain ketoconazole and are cheaper.

Soap, mask, paste, Sulsena shampoo

Suitable for combating dandruff in boys and girls. The preparations contain 2.5% sulene disulfide, it has a general strengthening effect on the hair, relieves itching, and increases the protection of the hair follicle from external aggressive factors.

Apply externally once a week for dry dandruff, 2 times for oily dandruff. Sulsena preparations are applied to clean skin for 15 minutes, then the remaining product is washed off. In addition to the quick recovery, users are pleased with the price of the product (shampoo paste 40 ml will cost between 80–90 rubles).

Shampoo "Friederm Zinc"

The active ingredient is zinc pyrithione (2%). The drug has high antimicrobial and antifungal properties, it slows down the activity of harmful fungi and microorganisms, and prevents the problem from becoming more complicated.

The product is suitable for children, adults and pregnant women. Contraindications include individual intolerance to the components of the drug.

A little shampoo is distributed onto moistened hair and foamed. After 5 minutes, wash off the product with plenty of water. For the first 2 weeks, it is recommended to use shampoo every 3-4 days. In the future, it can be used once a week. The course of therapy is 1–1.5 months.

The cost of Friederm Zinc shampoo is 690 rubles. Reviews about the product are positive; it is a safe, effective shampoo for any age.

Traditional methods

Chemical compounds can provoke allergies and rashes in children, so parents resort to treatment with folk remedies. If no serious health problems have been identified that triggered the development of dandruff, drug treatment can be postponed.

Diet, calmness, and simple home procedures will come to the rescue.

The following recommendations will help you cure dandruff in children without special medications:

Rinsing with decoctions of medicinal herbs (calendula, chamomile, nettle) will be useful.
Add a few drops of tea tree to your regular shampoo; it perfectly soothes, tones the skin, relieves inflammation, and prevents the development of the problem.
A therapeutic mask made from castor oil, almond oil, and grape seed extract will speed up the child’s recovery. Apply the mixture to problem areas before washing your hair.
Rinse your hair with onion peel infusion. Blonde beauties should be careful with this folk remedy; light hair will acquire a reddish, reddish tint.

Complex therapy

The primary task in combating the problem is to eliminate the cause of dandruff, therefore, in combination with drug treatment, special attention is paid to the child’s nutrition.

Experts recommend following a strict diet to prevent the problem from occurring in the future. Basic rules for its compilation:

give up sweets, fatty foods, smoked foods, foods with preservatives, harmful food additives;
forget about fast food, chips, crackers, carbonated drinks;
focus on healthy, vitamin-rich foods, add fruits and fresh vegetable salads to your diet;
Replace black tea and coffee with dried fruit compote and fresh juices;
The way the food is prepared matters. For example, frying should be replaced by steaming and short stewing;
requires plenty of fluids.

The diet is selected individually, taking into account the cause of the disease and the characteristics of the patient’s body. Entrust the preparation of your diet to a nutritionist.

Advice. Consult your doctor to prescribe a complex of vitamins and microelements. For active teenagers, this is an excellent way to strengthen the immune system and prevent the development of various diseases.

Speech development calendar for a young child

Early age is considered a very important period in a child's life.

This is the time of the most stormy and rapid changes in the mental and physical development of the baby; the child takes his first steps, learns to speak, begins to use gestures and other communicative means.

3 weeks - 1 month - a cry appears, indicating emotional discomfort, pain or hunger. When physically stressed, the child grunts, making the sounds “a”, “e”.

2 - 3 months : the child begins to hum, he pronounces simple sounds - “a”, “u”, “s”, sometimes in combination with “g”. This is an important stage in the development of speech in young children.

4 - 6 months - makes high-pitched melodious sounds, exclamation sounds, reacts with joyful sounds to the faces of loved ones.

6 - 9 months - babbling, he repeats the same syllables (“ma-ma-ma”, “ba-ba-ba”. “dya-dya-dya”, “gu-gu-gu”).

9 – 11 months – the baby begins to imitate the sounds of adults’ speech.

11 – 14 months – the first meaningful words “mom”, “dad”, “baba”, “uncle” appear, from 8 to 14 words. Correlates a word with an object

By the age of 2, a child’s vocabulary contains 100-200 words. He is already constructing a sentence of 2-3 words.

By the age of 3, the volume of the vocabulary increases to 1000 words due to the enrichment of the child’s life experience. Simple prepositions appear: in, on, under, for, with, at. The child remembers poems and children's songs.

By the end of 3 years, most children are able to construct sentences grammatically correctly, conduct dialogues, and tell what they saw and heard.

It is important to know:

Do not listen to advice from other parents whose children began to speak after 3 years, that the child will speak on his own. He will speak, the only question is what kind of speech it will be, its quality.

How to identify signs of speech disorders in a child?

By the end of 1 month the baby does not cry before feeding

By the end of 4 months, he does not smile when his mother talks to him, and does not gurgle.

By the end of the 5th month, does not listen to sounds and music

By the end of the 7th month, does not respond to voice intonation, does not recognize the mother’s voice due to the “revival complex”

By the end of 9 months there is no babbling, the child does not repeat sound combinations and syllables after an adult

By the end of 1 year, the child does not wave his hand when saying goodbye, or his head as a sign of denial. Does not utter a single word and does not follow simple instructions: “give”, “here”, “take”.

By the age of 1.5 years, does not show or name mom and dad, does not build a tower of cubes, does not differentiate sounding toys, does not use a pointing gesture.

By 2 years of age, does not show body parts, does not show mom and dad in photos, does not follow two-step instructions (go to the kitchen and put a plate on the table)

By the age of 2.5 years, he cannot distinguish between “big and small” and does not communicate with children.

By the age of 3, he cannot say his first and last name or tell a simple poem or fairy tale.

If this does not happen, there is a reason to turn to specialists.

Possible causes of speech disorders

Viral and endocrine diseases of the mother, threat of miscarriage, trauma, toxicosis, low hemoglobin levels.
Genetic abnormalities, hereditary predisposition.
Unfavorable birth.
Diseases suffered by a child in the first years of life
Children who received low Apgar scores at birth

The exact cause of the violation is determined by the doctor, and the type of speech disorder is determined by the speech therapist.

What can parents do for successful speech development?

Speech is the highest mental function, therefore the period of intrauterine development of a child is very important. Parents need to take care of the development of speech even before his birth. It is important that the expectant mother receives only positive emotions .

Communicate more with your baby! Friendliness, a soft and calm voice, and grammatically correct speech are another important factor in speech development.

Often, children, using only a pointing gesture, get what they want. Teach your child to express his desires as fully as possible, to say new words and sentences.

Don't scold your child for mispronouncing words. This can provoke neurotic reactions. He will withdraw and stop speaking and learning new words.

Develop your baby's ability to listen and be attentive. Play games with him that promote the development of listening and hearing skills: “Listen, what’s ticking there? What’s that noise?” Let your baby learn to distinguish between speech and non-speech sounds (environmental sounds).

Teach fairy tales and poems with your child, because... by memorizing and repeating them, he learns new words, trains memory and attention.

It is important to know:

Speech disorders can be corrected - it is important not to waste time!

Author-compiler: Mikhnovich O.F. teacher-speech therapist

Prevention

It happens that the treatment was carried out, the problem was eliminated, but the unpleasant flakes reappeared. Why does relapse occur? The answer is simple - the cause has not been fully eliminated or the hair care is incorrect.

To prevent dandruff in children and adolescents 12 years of age you will need:

correction of the child’s nutrition and lifestyle;
use only your own comb, towel, hat;
refusal to wash children's hair with adult shampoo, use cosmetics appropriate for the age category;
do not allow the child to become overtired, take care of his emotional calm;
in winter and autumn, give children multivitamin complexes.

For preventive purposes, medicated shampoos are used. They are used once every 1–2 weeks.

Possible complications

Violation of the rules for using medications, delaying treatment, and incorrectly prescribed therapy contribute to the development of unpleasant complications:

allergic rashes, irritability of the skin;
severe hair loss, baldness;
the appearance of crusts and scabs on the skin;
large-scale damage to the integument by fungi, bacteria, problem areas can be seen on the hands, face and body.

Children are characterized by mobility and susceptibility to dermatological diseases. The task of parents is to protect them as much as possible from attacks of harmful infections, start treatment in a timely manner, and prevent relapse in the future. Remember, dandruff is a signal of a malfunction in the body that requires attention and appropriate treatment, otherwise harmless “snow” in the hair will result in a complex problem.

Possible reasons

A child may constantly snort in his throat for the following reasons:

Residual manifestations after a cold and psychological disorders in the baby are distinguished by an obsessive cough.
Parasites. Parasitic larvae may be the culprit behind a baby's throat sniffling. They even penetrate into the lung tissue, and occasionally the parasite larvae leave the body together with sputum, and then return back during a sigh, which greatly complicates the process of getting rid of them. The treatment regimen is determined by the doctor; as a rule, it includes taking antibacterial drugs.
Impairments in the functioning of the lungs. It is considered one of the most common problems. The mucus present in the respiratory tract is characterized by the presence of protective properties. If the treatment for an infectious or viral disease was chosen poorly, the properties of the mucus may be lost, resulting in inflammation in the lung tissues.
The presence of staphylococci and streptococci in the body. In this situation, you cannot do without the help of a doctor; you should avoid self-medication, as it can provoke the development of side effects.
Disturbances in the functioning of the cardiovascular system. The child must be shown to a cardiologist if other doctors have not found any violations in their field.
Allergic reaction. This is one of the most common causes of grunting and snorting in childhood. Most often it acts as a seasonal disease, developing in children during flowering plants. If this cause of pathology is present, the child’s skin may itch and redness may appear.