3 Ways I Keep My Daughter’s Hair Healthy & Maintain My Sanity

If you’ve been following me for a while then you know I’m team #ShortHairDontCare and part of that is because I have 2 daughters with enough hair for a small village.  Thankfully my teenager is at the stage in her life where she is pretty independent and can do her own hair…thank you Sweet Baby Jesus!  But my youngest daughter is 6 and if I left it up to her she’d be sporting one ponytail.every.single.day.  -_-

Both of my girls came out of the womb looking like they had a lace front wig on.  Their hair was so much easier to deal with when they were younger.   Now I don’t know about you, but spending an episode of Jessie doing hair is just no fun.  Luckily Mo will sit still and isn’t too tender-headed, but I the stress of daily hair styling on her hair (and me) were not healthy.  During the summer our go-to hair style is using 8 jumbo braids because we are usually in the pool a lot and it’s easy to co-wash and condition her hair when it’s like that.  But now that school has started I didn’t want to send her to school looking hella crazy every day and I SURE AS HECK didn’t want to have to do her hair each morning.  I am so not about that life.

One of the best things to keep her hair healthy and help momma maintain her sanity is to have her hair in a protective style.   A protective style is basically a hair style that will protect the hair from being over manipulated.  It can be braids, weaves or even wigs.  But just because your hair is in this type of style it doesn’t mean that you can just neglect your hair.  You still need to make sure and properly care for your tresses as well as your scalp.

1.  Make sure that the braids aren’t too tight.  Lawd there is nothing worse than seeing a little kid with their braids so tight that they look like they’ve had a face lift.  You know what I’m talking about so don’t even look at me like that…mmmhhhmmm.  Too much tension can wreak havoc on their hairline and cause damage such as traction alopecia.  And sometimes that hair loss is irreversible. Also I try not to leave the style in for longer than 2-3 weeks.  Since her hair is being braided with her own hair this is really the longest it should stay in before we remove the braids and give her head a rest for about a week.
2. Even while her hair is braided I make sure to moisturize and keep her scalp clean.  Since she LOVES to be outside 24/7 and sweats like a “you know what in church” I keep her hair clean with dry shampoo and use an astringent on her scalp.  I also spray her hair while she’s in the tub at night and add coconut oil to her hair concentrating on her ends.
3. Now after all that work has been done to have it styled, I make sure it’s gonna be cayute each day too!  I tried a satin bonnet once…yea once.  So what I do is make sure she sleeps on a satin pillowcase.  I even found a hot pink one so you know she’s all about sleeping on that.

What’s your favorite protective style?  If you have a style you want to share tag me on social media at @wineingmomma #WineingMommaPS so I can check them out!