To say she has brought this on herself?

[GreenHairDontCare]

Dd is 13. A couple of months ago at great expense I let her have the bottom half of her hair bleached blonde. It looked lovely.

Last week she phoned me from her friend's and said she was putting a wash out green dye on it. I told her not to as it would stain the blonde.

She did it anyway. She has spent the last week washing it with dandruff shampoo, baby shampoo, washing up liquid and today as a last try we did a vitamin c powder twice.

Somewhat predictably she still has bright green hair.

She goes back to school tomorrow. They are VERY strict. Natural hair colours only. She will likely be sent home. She is now (at nearly ten pm) having a screaming fit about it. I've told her that if they send her home I'll be marching her straight to the hairdressers to get it cut short. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to her apparently.

I'm leaving dh to deal with her. As far as I'm concerned this is her problem to sort out, I told her not to do it and told her it wouldn't wash out.

AIBU?

And does anyone have any suggestions, other than bleach which I'm trying to avoid?

Bunnyfuller I used Glints at 13, DGM did it for me!

Naturally blonde but bright colour addict here. This is how I faded out my last lot of colour (after deciding to go back blonde so having it bleached, then in a moment of madness added some purple bits that I regretted!):

1. Make a paste of shampoo, baking soda and white vinegar. It opens the cuticle. Leave to sit for 5 mins & rinse.

1. Shampoo a couple of times with t-gel anti dandruff shampoo.

1. Slather on conditioner (may need to leave overnight as hair will be dry from the stripping)

1. Repeat if needed.

This should tone it down to a much lighter shade. Then do an 8 or 24 wash dye over the top if needed, or disguise in a sock bun thing for a few weeks until it fades out completely. A spray in non-permanent dye will help to disguise also.

Argh! Kids!

The strictness of school rules regarding this sort of thing never ceases to amaze me. I went to a very normal comp in the 90s and while we had a uniform and they were pretty strict on no trainers etc, your hair was yours to do with as you wished. There were dreadlocks, mohicans, girls with undercuts and fully shaved heads, red hair, green hair, purple hair.
I seem to remember them also turning a blind eye to facial piercings and jewellery. Most days I wore a short skirt with either ripped or fishnet tights and DMs (grunge era!!) and did a lot of fucking about with henna...

Our learning was not affected. I did consistently well with my orange hair and the girl who got the best GCSE results in the school in maths had a pierced nose and an undercut. I would really love to know the rationale behind these rules.

Oh god I dread this. I dyed my hair every colour under the sun as a teenager after many years of my mum being in control of my hair.

Dd is only 6 but has bum length hair that's a mixture of copper / brown and blonde. when if she dyes it I will be gutted! It's perfectly straight too which is NOTHING like mine and I'm so envious of it. Arggggh I dread it

Anarrow. Have you ever tried the really cheap walk ins? I've had some good hairdressers there, cuts which have been admired. One was trained by a West End firm and worked there for several years.

A friend was once in tears that her daughter had one side of her hair brightly coloured, the other side shaved. 'It's only hair, it'll grow' was what I convinced her over a glass or several! As a PP said, it's not a tattoo!

Ephemeral - it's to do with learning conform to rules and to eliminate extra reasons to bully. Totally wild hair colours and cuts can be a distraction and also can encourage students to outdo each other and focus less on lessons. Also, certain styles can be seen as extreme and anti-social as they look aggressive in nature. That's highly subjective, but it's not for teachers to get into approving one extreme hair cut or colour over another. Cue the "it's not fair, x has hers shaved underneath so I want mine shaved right down the centre with wisps left either side..."

Good grief, I can't believe any parent would allow their 13 year old to bleach their hair and not be prepared to follow through with a hairdresser. You can't expect a once off service for something like this, and not expect ongoing maintenance. Yes, changing your hair colour is normal, and something many young people do, but you need to be prepared to pay for maintenance if you are going to go for extremes of colours.

And I say that as someone who has fire ombre hair, so I know all about paying a decent hairdresser to keep my hair in good condition and not ruin it with my colour choices (my current colour is not even the most extreme that I have had!) and having to put a lot of effort into maintaining it.

to eliminate extra reasons to bully

Complete crap - bullies bully because they aren't nice people - not because someone has green hair -

Accidentally dying one's hair bright green or orange is a valuable life lesson that most people I know have learned. Surely the school would cope with a green bun til it washes out fully?

Oh dear, what a life lesson lol. I too dyed my hair with 'Sun In' in the late 1980's. I went to school looking like a carrot.

If I were you I'd buy some light brown and dark brown dye from supermarket and give her the choice.

Green is hard to cover up.
To be honest she could have gone swimming in a salt regulated pool and turned green too. I've also had this, but as an adult.

The other thing you could buy is the spray in brown they do in superstores. Just spray the ends until it's an acceptable length to trim the excess.

What a pickle. Hope your daughter is having a good birthday despite her green hair :D

Hairdresser here.

1. Colour B4 will only work on oxidising colours and has zero effect on direct dye bright fashion colours as they're completely different products chemically speaking.
2. Fashion brights will invariably stain hair that has been bleached, especially if you use a strong alkaline product afterwards such as dandruff shampoo.
3. Hairdresser's aren't covered by their insurance to apply bleach or colour to anyone under 16 as per EU labelling regulations. (Read any pack of hair dye and they all say not to be used on persons under 16)
4. Did the hairdresser do any skin tests beforehand? You would usually apply a toner after bleaching which could cause an allergic reaction.

Children going through adolescence are much more sensitive to hairdressing chemicals and that's one of the main reasons that the rules were introduced. 4.You need something red based to neutralise the green.

1. A blonde box colour will not do anything useful other than cause further damage if it contains lightening agents.
2. You should try to cover it with a brown.

Oh dear, DD did this last summer. Not on bleached hair though but it was naturally light to start with. She did a fading half length of blue going in to green. Did it two days in to the six week holiday and it was supposed to wash out after a couple of weeks especially if you washed it every day, with anti dandruff shampoo and also if you went in a swimming pool. It didn't. She swam every day for three weeks solid whilst we were on holiday and with only a week to go before back to school it still hadn't even really faded let alone gone. The blue had but the green was very persistent (I think the chlorine 'set' it tbh!). The only thing that worked was a whole bottle of tomato ketchup rubbed in to then green, left for an hour or so, then washed out. We did this three times (i.e. three bottles) and by then it had faded enough for it to,not be too noticeable (unless you looked closely) when it was Dutch plaited every day. Finally all gone round about the October half term. Never again.

The blue box colour B4 got rid of my green - and I'd been dying it green for MONTHS. It was a very light pastel green. Looked mostly blonde though. Then I slammed bright red on and it looked epic To clarify my hair did go bright red. Which means the green was gone.

Send her to ds3's school. He tells me he's the only one in the school with natural hair colour

I did similar once. Went behind my mum's back and got my friends sister to bleach my hair (she was a hairdresser). Then decided it would be a brilliant idea to dye the underneath pink- only to be suspended from school until it was sorted out.

Mum left me to deal with it on my own- talking to my teachers etc and I was working for nearly a month for nothing to pay her back for getting my hair 're dyed at a hairdressers- funnily enough she didn't trust my friends sister to do it for me

We're sorted. Sort of. Used a Nice n Easy Mahogany and it's now a chestnut brown all over with some lighter and darker bits. The green has bled through slightly in places (or I didn't cover it) but it barely shows and she's happy.

The blonde has gone, but I'm over it, she enjoyed it while it lasted and I won't be shelling out for it again. And as I've gone through enough of my own hair dye calamities I've decided to be zen about it all.

I ended up with blondey green hair after experimenting with purples and blues which faded to green and stained my hair, no matter what colours we tried the green would come back through, I tried vitamin c scrubs, ketchup (grim) and nothing worked. I bought from boots some rose coloured shampoo (brand is called bleach) and the pink neutralised the green, it took took few weeks but it removed the green stain and I know have silvery blonde hair and you'd never know it'd been green.

Should really of scanned that post for typos before submitting

Yay! Pleased it got sorted.

Well better for her to find out now how her hair reacts to colour than before an important event that saps her confidence if it goes wrong (still remember the tomato soup effect over too long roots that happened just before I started the new job!)

Tiny the whole lot brown.

My family love our hair dyeing, and we've had our share of mishaps. If the school are that fussy and you can't hide the ends in a bun you can just cut the ends off, or dye the lot black or very dark brown, black is the safest. If you do go for brown use an expensive make as it will have strong pigments, I tried using a cheap brown dye on green hair and it turned my hair muddy green. There are lots of hair cutting tutorials on line, in fact my daughter's hair was chopped by mates for years and it always looked quite good. Get your daughter to contribute to any costs, she knew the school rules. my daughter always dyed her hair bright colours in to summer and then went black for school.

Good luck and use Youtube for guidance.