We neglected brushing her hair for quite a while. Well, brushing it properly, and well, strictly speaking it was I and not we who neglected brushing her hair because somehow the job of hair maintenance had fallen entirely to me. And the fight she put up was beyond me. It was more than I could resolve in the last precious minutes before she and I raced out the door to work and kindergarten. He long gone to work, an hour before us, don’t get me started. I swooped her hair up into ponytails to disguise the worst dreadlocks. My mother started making impolite inquiries about which conditioner we were using on her hair, was it one of the cheap ones, because you and your sister had very long hair and it never ended up like this.
Finally it was her father who said the hair situation had gone on long enough. He spent an hour with her sitting in a rapidly cooling bath soaking in my (too expensive) conditioner while he painstakingly pulled apart her knots and made hysterical proclamations. These will never come out, we’ll have to cut all her hair off. The pirate freaked out, apparently she loves her long hair.
Lauca has since agreed to co-operate for a twice daily hair-brushing session, and I can report that her hair is quite lovely now.
I only wash the kid’s hair in water, but he’s got very short hair, so I don’t know if that works on girly tresses. He only gets brushed when he’s showing an interest in his father’s hairstyling. I generally don’t brush my hair either, but my hair is straighter than anyone’s. I pull out any little tangles with my fingers and sort of pat it in the right direction. I wash it in stuff from the hippy shop, which is sort of the hair equivalent of wool wash. I ran out two weeks ago. Possibly three. A handmade olive oil soap seems to be doing the trick in the interim. We’re keeping very low standards hereabouts, and sometimes we don’t bother meeting them.
I did give the kid a bath today. I wasn’t sure if it had been two or three days since his last full-body wash. (Obviously we remove any food/snot/poohy quickly, we’re not totally negligent).
My daughter (8) now does her own hair and takes her own showers, and usually she does fine. When she was Lauca’s age, her hair was shorter and it’s curly, so it looked OK whether or not we really brushed it, and I would comb it through with conditioner in the bathtub and that was it. I had butt-length hair at 3 and I don’t know how my mother managed to make me sit still long enough to do what she did. Ever seen a 3-year-old with a beehive?
My daughter (nearly 10) has been doing her own hair for a couple of years now with varying results. Every so often I announce that it’s time for me to have a go at it to get a bigger than usual tangle out, but mostly she does pretty well. When she was little her hair was very fine and not terribly long so it was never a big drama.
My boys (6 and 11) on the other hand flatly refuse to let a comb near their hair. They also object to having haircuts but given the choice between a haircut every couple of months or combing daily they give in and endure the clippers and scissors.
i had exactly this problem – refusal to allow her hair to be combed, loud screaming when i did manage to hold her down and comb it. solution: kept her hair very short until such time as she was prepared to look after it! she had it long for a whilt, but last year, i chopped it off myself due to a refusal by her to look after it properly. wasn’t much of a punishment, cos everyone just complimented her on the new short do, but at least it was easier to manage and remained nit-free (the long hair just seemed to be a nit-magnet). i still don’t think i’ve won the hair wars yet. would love to hear from you a year from now as to how successful you’ve been!
I was remembering recently that in Year 6 I went on school camp and ended up with a bird’s nest on my head because my mother had always brushed my hair. Shame on me. Yep, regular conditioner is the key, I reckon. Her hair looks lovely in the pic.
Mine is a boy with slightly shaggy hair and he squeals up a storm when I comb out the knots, so I have greatest sympathy for your dilemma.
I practically have to sit on Miss 2 to do her hair, particularly the patch at the back that seems to become one big snarl. Her Dad just pretends it’s not there when it’s his drop off day. Shorter hair would be easier, but at the moment it’s curly and I’m afraid we might loose the curls if we chop it off. We did that to Mr 5 when he was her age, and his hair is now dead straight.
we loving refer to the patch at the back as ‘The Birds Nest’
Miss 5 has hair just below her shoulder which is really fine, I use spray in conditioner on it when brushing it in the mornings, her wee sister has curls that only get looked at when in the bath…. the wee lad isnt old enough to do anything to his hair lol
My lovely 17 month old M is building up little dreadlocks on the back of her head because, given her disability, she can’s sit up, crawl or walk, so her head is always resting against something: car seat, special chair, lying on the floor, in a shower chair thing while being washed. She also has a slightly larger than usual head, and very boofy, puffy air, that can look completely ridiculous, in a charming sorta way. So I’ve taken to attempting to brush and comb it, which is not easy given the balancing chin on hand manouvres, and then putting it in one of those “fountains” on top of her head, held in place with both elastics and 25 clips. I remember even as a child I thought these looked ridiciulous on other kids. And my partner finds them absurd as well, but I point out that her giant fluffy helmet is equally absurd, and which would he rather? So the fountain is growing on me . . . And I just hope she forgives me when she’s older.
Miz Lippy I am dying to see your daughter’s hair. I never liked the fountain either but it certainly serves its purposes, although giant fluffy helmet sounds too cute.
This is going to be one of those annoying “sounds like an ad” comments, but I mean it sincerely.
I spent the first 25 years of my life struggling with my insanely curly thick hair. It endlessly knots and dreads itself if left down and so has spent much of its time braided or short. But then, I found Abba Nourishing Shampoo (now renamed as ABBA Pure Gentle Shampoo). It’s so ridiculously good, that for the first time in my life I don’t even need to condition – the shampoo is enough to get the tangles out which, for a person with curly hair, is insane.
It’s vegan and cruelty-free and a *little* expensive, but not nearly as expensive as some.
Of course, this doesn’t solve the child-fighting-the-hair-brushing issue exactly, but it would solve the hour-in-the-bath cleanup issue, because I’ve pulled the knots and snarls out of my hair in two minutes flat with this shampoo after neglecting it for a week – no problem.
[…] do you have any advice for this email I received? I keenly await your reply because I still struggle with this with my daughter. Lauca is now eight years old and not only does she still refuse to brush her hair but she now uses […]