Ana Lia was four years old when I decided that we were going to cut her hair into a curly bob. Brushing it had become a daily battle, sometimes taking 40 minutes and ending in tears…from both of us. Long hair is an important tradition for Tongan girls, but no tradition was worth the upheaval her hair was causing our family. I was done. I went and asked a close friend of mine who is an incredible hair stylist, to cut Ana Lia’s hair. She told me that she would of course cut it, but maybe we should try changing products to see if that helped before we cut all her hair off. And thus, we stepped into the vast world of curly girls.

The first products we tried were DevaCurl Decadence Co-wash and Conditioner. These made an immediate difference in the amount of matting in the back of her hair. I read all the instructions on the DevaCurl website and learned about the benefits of co-washing instead of shampooing. This lead me down the rabbit hold of the Curly Girl Method (CGM). I also learned about the law suits against DevaCurl, so I didn’t purchase any more of those, but I had already begun to investigate which products might be best for Ana Lia.

One of the first things I noticed was that anything with coconut or coconut derivatives in it matted her hair horribly. Our first few easy steps that removed the daily battle of brushing her hair: shampoo only once a month (or when she has actually put dirt in it, which she does from time to time…), don’t use any coconut or coconut derivatives, and only brush her hair in the shower.

This quickly became quite the investment of time and money trying to figure out how to care for her hair, but Afa and I decided it was a wise investment in both. She is always going to have curly hair, and we wanted her to love that about herself. I didn’t want her hair to feel like a burden to her or something that she just had to deal with. If I figured out some things while she is young, like the coconut sensitivity, she wouldn’t have to figure that out in the challenging pre-teen years when she starts to care what her hair looks like. We will have already done a majority of the work for her. On days where the new products or processes we try don’t work, at five years old she doesn’t notice if her hair is super frizzy for the day until I can try again. At 13, that could easily lead to a meltdown.

The most important thing I have learned on this year long journey is that every curly head is different. The products and methods that work for Ana Lia don’t work for me, and probably won’t work for anyone else exactly as we use them, but maybe there are some lessons that are more generally applicable for parents trying to help their curly child thrive. She has thin, low density, med/high porosity hair. Knowing these “hair stats” can be helpful in finding the right products, and there is an easy test for them here.

1. I wash her hair every Sunday. If we braid it, then we may wait until the following Sunday to wash it again. If we leave it down or style it in a way other than braids, it’s usually ready to be washed again by Thursday. I only brush it in the shower, when it is soaking wet with conditioner it it.
2. I use Kinky Curly Come Clean as our clarifying shampoo, and we use that once a month. The rest of the time, we use MopTop Co-wash and MopTop Daily Conditioner, which are the closest replacements I have found for DevaCurl. When using Co-wash instead of shampoo, it’s imperative to spend 5-7 minutes doing a scalp massage to get all the built up grime off her head. These are both $14/bottle, which seemed outrageous to me when we first started this process. I had never paid more than $7 for any hair product in my life. But, these are very concentrated, so I generally only use about a quarter size amount in my hand and mix it with lots and lots of water as I work it through her hair. They last about 3 months. 
3. While her hair is still soaking wet, I add Kinky Curly Knot Today leave-in conditioner. This is one of the products that has helped us the most with detangling. And then I finish with Kinky Curly Curling Custard. A tiny little bit of this goes a long way. It’s $20 so the sticker shock for this one was real, but we have had it for almost nine months and only used about ¾ of the bottle.
4. On the days that I shampoo, I use deep conditioner instead of regular conditioner. We use Mielle Babassu and Mint Deep Conditioner. I cover her hair with the deep conditioner, clip it to the top of her head, then let her take a 20-30 minute bath alone while it sits. (Baths alone are one of her favorite activities, so she thinks this is a treat.)
5. On wash days when she wears it down, I use Mielle Mint and Almond Oil to “scrunch out the crunch” and seal in the moisture once her hair is completely dry.

Two other things we do to keep the tangles and frizz at bay. 1) I only dry her hair with a white 100% cotton t-shirt. It doesn’t pull the way that terry cloth does, which reduces frizz. 2) If she wears her hair down during the day, I put it in a loose ponytail on top of her head (“pineapple” in CGM lingo) for her to sleep.

This process has taken us over a year to perfect. I purchased one or two products at a time, and only changed them one at a time so that I could easily see what worked and what didn’t. A year later though, I can honestly say that her hair is a joy. She loves having it braided in different styles, and I have more space to be creative since I’m not reduced to tears brushing it every day.

Because I have spent so much time and money on learning to properly care for her hair, I can get a little dogmatic about what happens to it. This is a temptation I fight with everything in me. It’s still HER hair. She asked several times if she could “flat” her hair, which meant she wanted to straighten it. My first instinct was refusal. We had worked so hard to get her curls to a healthy place! But I’ve straightened my wavy hair many times, so I understood the desire for a change of pace. I got hair protectant so that the straightener wouldn’t fry her hair, and our nanny straightened it for her. She LOVED it. After a few days, we used shampoo, deep conditioner, leave in, and oil. Her curls bounced right back.

Any time someone compliments her curls, my first response is “It’s been a journey!” Testing multiple products to find the right ones took money. Trying different methods of application took time. Her hair will change as she grows up, and we will have to adjust the routine, but for us, the journey was worth it. Doing her hair is fun bonding time for us now instead of a battlespace. Some days she wants a pig tail on one side with the rest of it left down: Go for it! Other days she wants six or seven braids: Let’s do it! It’s another avenue for my little artist to be creative, and I’m so grateful we got there.