High Maintenance Hair

There's no task I avoid more than fixing 3 1/2-year-old Jillian's hair. There's no interaction with me that she avoids more than me washing and brushing her hair. No kidding. I think she would rather have a spankin' than me me fix her hair. I think I would rather choose living in the Arctic over doing her hair. Well, maybe not live in the Arctic...but you get the point.

Jillian's hair is like a marvel of the modern world. People don't just gawk, they stare. They point, they giggle, and they come up to touch it all the time. People frequently ask me (in all seriousness) if she's Travis's child. Some are sure she must have some ethnic blood to have received a head full of hair as curly and big as her's. She sometimes covers her head when someone's approaching because she knows what's coming and doesn't want another person messing with her 'fro!

I'm never lacking in strangers' advice in how to tame the 'fro, either. I get all kinds of "free" (and unsolicited) advice (from people with stick-straight hair, mind you) for what to do to tame the 'fro. When these people are standing there giving me all this advice, I'm thinking, "Do you really think I haven't already contemplated this 'magic potion' or fix already?!"

Taming Jillian's hair still remains a mystery to me and, YES, I have tried everything I've been told (within reason) and everything I can think of, short of taking her to the salon for a professional relaxer. I've researched and tried all kinds of homemade potions, ethnic hair oils and creams, expensive conditioners and all shapes and sizes of brushes and combs.

No matter what I do, we get the same result every time. When I comb and fix her hair right after she showers and bathes it looks great. The little curls are all defined, her hair is a "normal" height, and it's just amazing to look at all those tiny curls. THEN it starts to grow. Hour after hour, as it dries and as she plays, naps and sleeps, it "grows" larger and larger. She can look at least 4" taller when she goes to bed at night compared to the way she looked after she got out of the shower that same morning.

Bath/shower time goes a little like this. She screams all the way through. The commotion and screaming is so frantic, I especially dislike having to wash her hair when we're at someone else's house or someone is visiting. I'm afraid someone will think it's child abuse! I wet her hair and work in the a cleansing conditioner (we don't use shampoo anymore) and then brush it through. I let her sit and play to her little heart's content while her hair soaks up as much moisture as it can. I usually let her play a LONG time because by the end of "round 1" I feel terrible that I have to cause my daughter such pain and I need time to muster up enough gumption to finish the job. She also makes up reasons as to why she wants or needs to play a little longer or wash her body off one more time to try and prolong the inevitable. I rinse her hair out and then put in some conditioner to leave in. I also just choose a few squirts out of several of the myriad of bottles of products I have (I've learned it doesn't really matter what product I use at this point...they all give the same results), and then we brush it again.

We use a big, good old fashioned flat paddle brush to brush through her hair. I have decided that hair picks must be something of Satan, and have prohibited them from being used on Jillian's hair. They're not all they're cracked up to be. They're less effective at combing through the mass, and they are more torturous to her because it takes longer and pulls and hurts more. Did I mention her head appears larger than a basketball by the time we're done picking out her hair?

Jillian and I have come to an unspoken acceptance that we have to practice coping with what we've got to work with, instead of wasting time trying finding the magic cure. AND, we practice being thankful for her unique personality and hairstyle that God sent with her to go right along with it. As long as I have my arsenal of products and we only wash and brush her hair every 2 or 3 days, we both can handle the curly hair challenges.