To judge the parents of a child who always has extremely knotty, unkempt hair?

[OhGodNotAnotherUserName]

Would this fall into neglect? There is a child I know, who is 9 and she always has extremely knotty hair - as in almost her whole head of hair is one massive knot. She is also a very shy child. The mother just laughs it off when it is mentioned, saying that her DD doesn't like having it brushed.

I can't help feeling this is neglectful. I know that other children tease the girl because of it and she generally seems like she lacks confidence etc.

The excuse doesn't really wash with me either, my DD who is 4 doesn't like her hair brushed sometimes but there is no way I would go a day without brushing it.

AIBU for this to spike my concern? I feel sorry for the girl and feel I can't help being judgemental to the mother. AIBU?

Have since read the full thread

Am so sorry for what you went through op it sounds truly awful and the fact that no one came to your rescue is appalling. Sometimes people need to judge and open their eyes to what is actually going on.

Dd 9 has ASD and sensory issues and hates having her hair brushed. We have it in a short bob, and I quickly run the tangle teezer through it before school, by the time her transport pulls up, looks like I have never brushed it .

Clearly Tangle Teasers often do work, seeing as you get so many people saying they do. They certain work for us - this is dd's hair and we want from screaming and tears every morning to not a sound immediately we started using one. You can use them very lightly too and they do gently tease out knots.

I am so sorry you were neglected as a child OP, I didn't realise that when I read your original post, although I did feel there might be more to it than meets the eye.
What I would say to you is you are allowed to be angry at the poor parenting you received and you are allowed to be angry at your parents for treating you this way.
But what I would also say to you is that the crap times you had as a kid have helped make you the person you are today and helped make you aware you need to be better parent to your own kid.
If you haven't already it might be worth considering some counselling for yourself, in order to come to terms with your past.
Hug for you now and a hug for the kid you were.
Take care.

I judge parents of mixed raced children who don't borther to do there childrens hair

With you tube all the blogs and forums on balck hair with the amount of black people in the uk Failing that go yo a bloody hair salon and it's even worse when it's boys because they can get a trim and a decent wite barber should be able to trim and Afro o judge when I see mother with there hair done and there children walking down the road with dry nappy knots it really boils my piss

Concern for a kid - and acting on that - is different from judging their parents though. YANBU to be concerned. YABU to judge because judging is a) pointless and nasty and b) impossible without all the info.

Crabbit I have been struggling to find out the easy way to do it.

You do it by an option called Customise but I can't find it.

The only way I managed to get to the Customise option was by going through Help at the very bottom of the page.

Under Help there is a list of FAQs. One is: "How do I customise the way my talkboards look." If you get to that one it tells you to click on Customise and there is a clicky link. Then you can do it. You can change the colours of your own posts as well (that has given me a surprise when reading old threads, to suddenly see "my" colour post come up and realise I actually posted on it).

Someone will now come along and direct you to the blindingly obvious Customise link which is an inch tall on every page

lol@child welfare issue. knotty hair is hardly a reason to call out social look at the bigger picture. is the child in clean clothes, has a warm coat in bad weather, from a loving home, well fed? Knotty hair alone isn't a social issue.

my son has knotty hair but his hair is shiny and thick looking at it no one would know. hes bloody lazy almost 10 and will take all of 30 seconds to do his hair. he;s lazy with everything his teeth brushing too. it's hardly a social issue.

same I will have to continue to treat him like a baby and brush it, or he will have to do it. So he does it sometimes and its not always perfect go report me (sighs)

"It's bad parenting ...I would judge !!"

Not as much as i judge the parent who makes their child sob because they are insistent on brushing knots out of their hair! It gives you ME a headache trying to detangle my horrible thin flyaway hair and my mother used to insist on brushing iT "until it shined like a princess - errr never mind the red rimmed eyes then!" My DD2 is the same - poor thing, id cut her hair short but she wants long and also it just gets matted and spikey when its short. So yeah, she has matts in her hair most of the time, it is brushed at least once a day but im fucked if im going to put her through what my mother put me through just to appease the pearl clutchers.

Obviously the OPs situation is very different and must have been just awful but it is about the bigger picture. Knotty hair on its own doesn't equal neglect.

Interestingly DD2 with the flyaway knotty impossible to brush hair has never had nits. Her older sister had lovely thick, easy to brush hair and was always getting infested. Thank the lord for this with DD2 because the only way we got rid of the nits with DD1 was the condition and comb routine and frontline i can't imagine being able to do that with DD2.

Balloon Thanks for that! I have done it and it's a bloody revelation - love it!! For you

How do you know she hasn't got sensory issues?

"excuse me mate, does your child have issues with you brushing her hair as it's messy?"

My sisters are identical twins, both will have the same hair style on the way to school, one will come home pristine and the other will come home looking like an owls nest.

Yes it should flag as a safeguarding concern at school - but wouldn't be considered in it own, for example if the child was otherwise cared for/or had sensory issues etc then there would be a good reason. But it could get part if a pattern of neglect and should be monitored. This probably wasn't the case when u were a child though op. And I have a child with sensory issues around hair brushing so often has tangy hair so this isn't said from judgement. But I've explained it to school.

I think that this is potentially a case of neglect. Such matted hair can't be washed properly, may attract head lice that can't be treated.
Because of it she probably looks unkempt and it will also affect her ability to make friends at school, which is something you have indicated.
I dealt with a similar case and I got the school nurse involved. The school can report this to the nurse who can talk to the mother, the school nurse can then move it on if she feels it really is neglect or just incompetence by the mother who needs help.

Nits like any hair, it's a myth that they only like dirty hair.

My DD is 8. She has an ASC with a raft of accompanying sensory issues. She has long fine hair that matts if you look at it. She hates having it brushed.
She also wears a summer dress to school all winter.
I am judged.
A lot.
My life is one long round of being judged because DD is being DD or because DS (also with an ASC) is being DS.
I do make DD have her hair brushed. But we all end up in tears.

I don't think conditioners were as good in the 80s and not even sure it existed in the 70s!
.I had long curlysih fine hair at that time and keeping it free of tangles would have been literally a full time job.

Two DDs, both with long tangly hair. Hair gets brushed last thing after uniform goes on, sometimes we run out of time - more important to get to school on time with homework done IMO.

Hmmm, invite the daughter over to play, and mum for a cup of tea afterwards when she collects, and talk it over.

It may be a good idea to reserve judgment until you are more aware of the facts.

op sorry I only just saw your update.

It's very hard to answer the question you actually want to have answers for, for example you are now 40 the answer would be different than if you are 21.

Before about 95 sadly almost none of what you mentioned would have got much reaction unless other concerns were also known about unfortunately before around that time neglect and emotional abuse unless it resulted in a serious incident used to pretty much be ignored,

A lot of it is what was considered to be significant abuse at the time the important bit being significant. We have some shameful times in our history with child protection/safeguarding we have time periods where everything other than the very worse physical abuse was ignored, where sexual abuse got paid attention to but only for very young children,and we have time periods where a great many kids in care were in there because they were percieved to be naughty with no parental fault. And neglect wise anything other than totally leaving your kids to fend for themselves for weeks on end wouldn't have raised much of an eyebrow.

Unless you fitted into a group that would automatically obtain more attention you were pretty much screwed.and even then it was usually only the very worst that would get much of a response.

That's not to say it was not wrong it's also not to say that parental failings of that nature were ok, clearly they are not ok and they do have a harmful impact we just pay more attention to them now.

I'm sorry I read your posts and formed the impression that you were doing what a lot of people do but it did read like that.

If it's any help and your family had involvement with SS records are kept for many many years I think minimum 30 you are entitled to request them

Please do something. When I was nine I was summoned to the heads office and given a comb :-). It's a practical solution to a child with messy hair. And at nine the child can comb her own hair if she has something to do,it with. However I wish now the school had done much more to safeguard me.

If her hair is so knotted that it's matted and would impossible or very to be brushed out then this would be neglect in my opinion. If it is I would assume school would have done something about either talking to parent or passing the concern to children's services.