Many of you have seen my daughter's hair. It looks sort of straight on the top but it a seething mass of curls underneith. Her hair looks sort of like small woodland creatures run through it with wild abandon every night. We went through a phase of brushing it several times a day, trying to get it under control. It helped, to some degree but it required us to have a brush with us at all time and take several minutes several times a day and get it good and brushed.
Then we went through the "superficial brushing" where we brushed the sort of straight hair and left the curls alone. That kind of worked, except eventually the curls got out of hand and all the hair was a mess.
Now we are in "the detangler" phase. I bought some cheap stuff at Deals to try and basically all it was make her hair wet and it smelled like dirt (it was supposed to be watermelon). I tossed it in the cabinet and went back to the superficial brushing.
Occasionally, I would hold her down and really brush it, which is what happened Saturday. My mom got involved because she was crying, which prompted a decnet arguement with her. She is absolutely certain that I'm making MT keep her hair long, despite covering her head and screaming "no, don't cut my hair" when asked about it. My mom decided to buy her some different detangler to see if something that wasn't from Deals would work better.
She bought her the Huggies Clean team stuff which smells ok (between that and the gel for The Boy's hawk, my car smells like a basket of fruit exploded in it LOL) and does it's job fairly well, but had problems all it's own. I don't why it does it, but it leaves her hair feeling greasy and nasty all the time. Quigs can attest to that because she felt the ick yesterday. combing repeatedly throughout the day helped but it was still pretty gross. Then we went to the park, where she got sand in her hair that stuck to detangler. Awful!
I'm at a lose what to do. I've got completely untangled hair and have had my entire life. Mostly my hair just lays there and if I forget to brush, no on can tell. I also take issue with HAVING to do things to hair. I've always believed that if you can't roll out of bed and be ready to leave the house in under 15 minutes, then your routine is too complicated. (mostly that applies to leaving the house without children) Suddenly, I'm spending 20 minutes every morning do hair, eithe spiking the mohawk or detangling or whatever.
I waver between "she should suck it up" because it doesn't hurt that bad to have your hair brushed and "I'm going to shave the damn stuff off until she can take care of it" because what we are doing now really isn't working.
Any suggestions that don't involve sitting on my child while dragging a brush through her hair or making her bald?
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4 comments:
Is the top part of her hair wavy at all? If so maybe you could put a curl enhancer all over after the shower to make it curly all over.
If not, if her hair is long enough to braid or put in a bun while it's wet then maybe it would keep the curls underneth from being so unruly while the hair on top would have a little wavy-ness.
They do have some EXCELLENT detanglers on the market but some are kind of expensive. My favorite brand is 'Carol's Daughter' and they sell some stuff called "hair milk" and it is AWESOME! I find that it is not a greasy as a lot of other products out there. All their products are natural and a little goes a long way =)
Good luck
Oh Freak...we should talk. I've been using detangling stuff on E for years now. You are right, there are good products and there are bad.
I've had to hold E down while she would scream and cry. I tried to convince myself that if we brushed more than once a day our problem would be solved. Nope.
I have also over-applied product only to have her hair look like I rubbed oil all over it.
What I have found to work, in addition to keeping her hair short is this: *Don't use a brush, use a wide-tooth comb. E requests this - she says it hurts less. *Johnson's Buddies Easy-Comb Detangler. We call it her "Magic Spray." It doesn't take a whole lot and I've used it on wet and dry hair. *Johnson's No More Tangles shampoo+conditioner for curly hair. It's pretty new on the market, and we love it. *Johnson's NMT leave in conditioner works really well too. If you use this after washing her hair, you won't need to use the spray.
Since I myself have issues with curly hair, I was prepared to deal with E's. This is a new venture for you, and I wish you luck. If you need help or support (sometimes the crying and screaming can make you feel like you are running a child torture facility) feel free to seek me out.
I'm a father of a girl with (it sounds like) similar hair. My wife and I have barely wavy hair and had little knowledge on how to deal with the curls. That is, until my wife found this book: Curly Girl.
It's available at the Urbana Free library (NF 2nd floord, 646.724/MAS).
I also found this brief overview of some of the ideas. http://www.wikihow.com/Follow-the-Curly-Girl-Method-for-Curly-Hair
We've been following some of the ideas for close to a year now, and they seem to have helped make hair management easier and looking good.
I had long hair that was always tangled as a girl. My mom had a bitch of a time with it and I'd SCREAM when she brushed it because she was always pulling it as she moved the brush through it.
Finally, she would only brush it at night after my bath and then in the morning she used Johnson's and Johnson's Detangler. I don't even know if they still have it... but it smelled good, and I liked that my flipping hair didn't hurt. She had a water squirt bottle and the detangler and would just spray down my head with a combination of the both in the morning and then it would air dry.
But I had unnaturally straight hair -- the kind of hair that defies even sitting in a chair for 3 hours with perm chemicals on it to try to get wavy hair...
In third grade she took me to get my haircut. As a person who was pretty oblivious, she and my mother turned the chair to face away from the mirror and I colored while the woman worked. Then they turned the chair around cheering at my new "do" and I looked up to see all my hair was chopped off and cried... for days.
I didn't cut may hair short for almost 15 years after it... I still have hair trauma. Okay, maybe this was more of a suggestion on what not to do...
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