DH, MIL and DD's hair

[BikerMouse]

I just need some perspective because this is driving me insane.

Dd's 2 and 4 have curly mixed race hair. Dd1's is slightly more manageable in that it's not so tightly coiled. I'm the only who brushes their hair. I've given clear instructions and shown them both how to deal with curly hair, neither of them seem to be able to. It needs brushing, plaiting or tying up before bed and in the morning or it becomes a tangled mess. Time and time again both Dd's come back from MIL with matted hair which takes ages brushing out, often with lots of tears.

I've tried everything. I've made it easier by putting their hair in plaits expecting her not to touch it. She takes the plaits out and we get matted, tangled hair anyway.

Do I need to unclench and let it go?

I feel your pain my mum cut my mixed race hair really short when I was little because she had no idea what to do and it looked awful!

My dd has v thick mixed race hair which I treat similar to you, but no brush and I wash it daily. She has frequent overnights with my dm and mil and I send her with a detangling shampoo and conditioner, detangling spray and a comb. Could that work? If you ask mil to wash their hair with it their hair shouldn't be that bad when they get back even if she won't leave the plaits in?

Is one of these near to you, OP? www.yell.com/s/afro+hair-essex.html

Good luck!

I really hope she bucks her ideas up this time Mouse.

I still remember my mum brushing my hip length hair as a kid and it fucking hurt- and I only have "white" hair. Can't imagine how painful Dds must be

Poor kids. Could you split their hair into maybe 20 or so sections and do individual plaits that don't get taken out - as opposed to cornrows? That could be cute. Or would the plaits get too messy?

Failing that, learn to cornrow or get someone to do it for you.

Oh sorry I just realised, that's kind of what you just asked her to do

Your MIL's behaviour is frankly odd.

DS(4) has tightly coiled mixed race hair. It's beautiful. ❤️ I want to say something, probably more in response to a lot of posts on this thread than directly to the OP for whom this may not apply, but I think it's important to be really careful around positioning mixed race hair as "problem hair". Sure, it's typically higher maintenance than Caucasian hair can be, but treated well (which obviously varies massively from one person to another - v frustrating having to try everything until you find what works, and v annoying to have to wade through endless 'stop brushing curly hair!!' type posts on this thread) it quickly falls into an easy routine.

I have had people say to me - so far thankfully never in DS' presence - that they don't understand why I bother with growing and oiling and braiding it, since he's a boy and I could get away with just clippering it all off. But it's lovely and beautiful and soft and he loves it and I love it. And it fits my gender politics (if he asks to cut it off, I suppose we'll have to; id take the same approach if he were white). And I think it's something that helps him feel really good about his African heritage, his beautiful curly African hair.

We keep it plaited almost all of the time, generally somewhere between 6 and 20 plaits or 6-10 cornrows. I keep the plaits in for a week at a time usually (they start to get a bit tatty after day 4, but it's rarely convenient to sort them out before the weekend), and if it's hair wash day and he wants his hair out then we do that and wash in the evening.

If he comes home from nursery on Monday with sand in his plaits I almost feel like crying 😂 But I don't let on to him that I'm stressed by it. I don't want him to grow up feeling negative about his hair. And I want to strike a balance between the good things that 'good hair' enables and signifies, and freeing him to be a small child who plays with the sand and doesn't get uptight if one of his friends gets a bit over-exuberant and chucks some onto his head.

I'd just go earlier to collect them, armed with the combs oil etc all the stuff you need to do their hair. Either do their hair in front of her or plonk the stuff down ,ask her to do their hair and then I'd sod of for an hour leaving her to it. I'd do this every time I picked em up... She'd soon get the message!

I've only just learnt to do DD's hair, OP (despite the fact that she is already seven and until recently, I have gone my entire mixed-race life without knowing how to do my own hair! ). This step-by-step guide helped more than the videos for me.