Toddler African American Hair ---- Please HELP!!

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As for the moisture, Aloe! Buy the natural leaf, peel it with a knife and put it in the blender. Use it as a conditioner, place a plastic cover over her hair and leave it on for 30-45 mins. Rinse off, style as usual. It is a wonderful remedy for both children and grown ups alike.

Hi, you may not want to wash her hair every week by washing it it takes out all the moisture and you will basically be starting from step 1 all over again once every other week may work better the dirtier the easier to manage. also try Pantene for relaxed and natural hair their leave in conditioner works great! putting her hair in small ponytails will help tame it. i would not leave her hair down it will only dry out more and get every tangled. keep it in ponytails but don't pull too tight that will cause the hair to come out. lastly you can take her to a salon they can warm press her hair and this will make it a lot easier to deal with. good luck!!

She might be lacking in Biotin, I started to use this on my daughter, and it seems to make a big difference, keep the dosage low, 300 mcg from Puritan's Pride is chewable and it's very cheap. I also use Mane N Tail conditioner, it can make har grow up to 1 inch a month, that may not sound like a lot, but to those of us with African hair, it makes a big difference! Aloe Vera Gel has been a life saver also, it is in the First Aid section at your local Drug Mart, a big bottle of the clear stuff is only $4.00 and it leaves the hair super soft and springy, not crunchy. I mix a little bit of the Aloe gel with the Mane N Tail conditioner in a spray bottle filled with water, then spray it on my daughter's hair in the morning, use a wide tooth comb to distribute from root to tip, don't make it too thick though, or her hair will turn white:) I wish you the best on your hair journey!

I'm a black female who wears hair completely natural, so I will try to help you as best as I can. First, I would check out several natural hair sites that might help you too. The first in www.naturallycurly.com, www.thiswildcrown.com/welcome/, and curlynikki.com . All are great websites that encourage natural hair care in its natural state. Once you ruled out any medical reasons for your daughters hair loss, you can start to focus on hair care. Please remember that you do not need to straighten your childs hair to manage it, but the following items may help maintain her natural curl. The black haircare section is not the best place to start. Go to a natural food store and purchase some aloe vera gel, coconut oil, a nice light oil like safflower or sunflower, a thick natural conditioner like Renpure Organic( which can be found at CVS) and shea butter. You can actually mix the butters and oils together to make your own 'hair grease'.

When you wash your daughters hair try putting them in braids BEFORE you wash. It will help to stop her hair from tangling. Also when using shampoo put 1 capful to about 4-5 oz of water. Don't worry, her hair will be clean. Once you rinse out the shampoo apply a little oil and conditioner. Let it sit on her hair for about 5-10mins. rinse. Now you can take the braids out, detangle and add a leave in( mix conditioner w/ some aloe and oil). Remember to detangle in SMALL sections and put mixture on EACH section. May seem like overkill, but it works. I would suggest that you put her hair in twist( two strands of hair twisted together) until her hair is completely dry. You can take down the twist or leave them in.

If you do decide to take them down the next day you can just wet( and yes, water is a natural haired girls friend)your hands and put them through her hair and reapply a small amount of the conditioner and aloe mixture.

Nightly you should retwist.
If you need anymore help please don't hesitate to contact me. Best of luck.

Check out this website: http://www.thiswildcrown.com/welcome/
I've started using the method suggested there on my 2 AA daughters (ages 2 and 5) and it's helped immensely.

Hi:
If you have good health insurance, you might want to consider getting a hair anaylsis to check for shortages of nutrients or too high levels of potentially dangerous elements. This may sound like overkill but a friend did this attempting to find out what was going on with her daughter who had numerous health issues that docs were not figuring out. Turns out she has celiac disease. I was just in to see my ENT who is treating my severe allergies. I also have breakouts of atopic dermatitis/eczema and asked if there was anything new treatment wise. He advised me to go to a very reputable health foods store and check out what they are seeing success with among their customers. Since I have tried a few topical products w/o success, it was suggested that even though I take krill fish oil and use grape seed oil on my skin daily that I may need the full range of omega oils internally, not just externally. I was taking in omega 3's with the krill oil but I couldn't say that I was also taking in omega 6 & 9's which the body also needs. I made a choice to take a product daily that provides all three omegas. I just started and will have to wait for a time to see if it helps. I don't eat a lot of junk but I don't take in enough fruit and vegetables. I know I feel better, my finger nails grow better, my hair is better when I take a multi-vitamin, a super-B, magnesium, calcium w/D3. I have a bad habit of not sticking to habits but I know for a fact that the body responds when it is given the nutrients it's missing so perhaps if your daughter isn't currently taking a vitamin or her diet isn't spot on or as you say she is very active and perhaps is in need of extra nutrients due to her activety level. My daughter also went through a bad hair time in 5th grade. She had the very light blonde, nearly white hair at the time that took on the look of being brittle, dry, almost over processed though she wasn't using anything more than shampoo and conditioner. We tried a few expensive products hoping it was just a moisture issue. Nothing helped. The condition of her hair resolved itself after a time, several months. That was 20 yrs ago. I always laid out a vitamin each day but left home for work before she was up. Sometimes she took it, sometimes not. Perhaps if I had forced the issue at the dinner table we would have seen a change in her hair. Just some thoughts.

I don't know if this is helpful or not, because I don't have any experience with this type of hair. However, it sounds like her hair is being damaged by over-washing, a product or the way you're combing through it. Oftentimes, curly hair can get very dry and brittle if it's washed too much. Perhaps a gentle shampoo once or twice a week is all she needs. I would consider calling a hair salon that deals primarily with African American women. They could probably give you a good idea about what to do for your daughter. Good luck!

I'm guessing that your daughter is mixed with African American and your background. Among my African American mixed friends (Black and white, Asian or Latino), I've found that leave-in conditioner is too lightweight to be of much use. I use (and have used since I was a kid) normal conditioner as leave-in conditioner and also comb it out while in the shower when my hair is still wet. I squeeze out the excess water after showering, but leave the conditioner in and towel dry my hair otherwise. The extra weight and moisture helps keep my hair from getting too round and orb-like, and loosens up the curls. I also use only a capful sized portion of shampoo about once a week, use it only nearest the scalp where you're likely to get sweaty, and make sure to wash it out thoroughly. I try to avoid shampoos and conditioners that list alcohol or sodium sulfate laureth (another drying agent) as among the primary ingredients. And when I was a kid, I wore ponytails all the time. Hope that helps!

If possible do not wash her hair every day, there are products that you can buy to put the mosture back into her hair such as oil conditioning packs and leave in conditioners. You might want to check out sallys beauty supply.My daughters and my self are caucasion, but when I was a foster parent I did respite care for an african american baby girl (wish I could have adopted her, but her foster parents did) and we got alot of help from our neighbors who were african american. Another option if that does not work is to see the pedatrician. My oldest daughters hair started to fall out and become very thin when she was going through kidney failure.. as soon as she has her surgery to fix her kidneys and got off all her medications her hair started growing back in... its been 3 years and her hair is thick and beautiful again.

Good Luck!

My daughter's hair would break as well. We used moisturizer and we didn't wash her hair often. It also didn't help that she would twist her hair (a self-soothing mechanism) to the point it would get in big knots that could only be cut off. I think the big problem was that we were combing it everyday and not styling it. We started putting her hair in twists and braids (as short as they were) and slowly her hair would grow since they could be left in for a few days.. When her hair was finally long enough we got it in corn rows which we could leave in for a few weeks. It's made a huge difference. Btw, my partner and I are white and she is AA.

Hi, My daughter is only 2, but we just started using "Mixed Chicks" shampoo and leave-in conditioner. Several moms who I stopped on the street recommended it for my little sweetie. (Yes, she is also African American) They have a website that has a video aobut how to use the conditioner. I think it mixedchicks.org. (not .com) It is sold in some beauty salons and some beauty supply stores. It's all natural and her hair is sooo soft and smells sooo good. She's gotten lots of complements since we started using it. And it is so much easier to detangle than all the other products I've tried.

I take it from your post that you are not African American yourself. Is your daughter biracial or just black? I'm just trying to picture her hair. I am biracial (black dad, white mom) and have a hair texture pretty unique to mixed people (looks a lot like white peoples curly hair, but much thicker). My son (4) is mostly black, and wears his hair in chin length "locks."

Anyway, you're doing good by not washing it more than once a week. What kind of shampoo are you using? Make sure you're using a shampoo from "the ethnic section" It's possible that the shampoo is too stripping for her hair. You might want to cut back to only washing it if it actually seems dirty.

The other concern I would have is in how your are styling it each day. If you're brushing it every day and trying to redo it, that might contribute to the breakage. You may have seen that a lot of little African American girls wear their hair in several little ponytails. You might consider something like that. Just put them in when you wash her hair and don't mess with them as long as they look okay.

Have you tried taking her to a black hair salon? A stylist there should be able to help you.

HTH
T.

You must moisturize her hair everyday! I use Miss Jessie's Baby Buttercreme (http://missjessies.com). You will have to wet her hair before using so I would just put water in a spray bottle. However, some in-store products, such as Luster's Pink Oil Moisturizer, work well. There are two kinds of Pink Oil, regular and light. Again, please moisturize her hair at least once a day.