my daughter

My adopted three year old daughter is biracial. Her hair is very curly, but has the texture of a caucasian. Being my hsband and i have straight hair and dont have the knowledge to care for curly hair i need some advice

1. after freshly washed her hair is beautiful ringlets. But once she sleeps it becomes a tangled mess. I cant even get a comb through it, and I dont want to have to wet it and condition it everyday just to be able to get a comb through it. Any advice to prevent night time tangles?

2. What is the best way to brush it when it is dry?

Thank you for any advice!

I would suggest checking out www.beadsbraidsbeyond.blogspot.com

The mom of this blog is really sweet and she is a member of this forum. Her screen name is NikG. I will see if I can contact her on Facebook and send her over to help you.

I agree with the above link, as well as www.happygirlhair.com. Her adopted daughters have different hair types so she is very familiar with curly hair

The website that helped me get started on my journey with my multiracial daughter is http://curls.biz. I was able to determine her hair type, and what products it needed. I love their products as well.

As for your questions:

Don't put her to sleep with her hair out. Detangle it then put it into a few loose braids. This will make it much easier in the morning. You can also buy a sleep cap to put on her so it doesn't get tangled or frizzy. When my daughter's hair is not in a protective style I just do about four braids or banded ponytails to put her to bed.

For the second question, don't brush her hair when it's dry. I'm not really familiar with caucasian textured curly hair, my daughter's hair is African, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's probably better to use a detangler and wide tooth comb on any curl type.

Good luck!

Thanks Lynnie!

tessakaren you have gotten some good advice so far so I'll just echo it a bit...

1. If I want my daughter to wear her hair out and curly the next day, I will do about 4-6 big braids or twists at night, then take them down in the morning. I usually just put it in a very high (but loose) ponytail on the top of her head. This was she is not crushing the curls (where it gets matted) in the morning I will take the ponytail holder out then use my fingers to fluff her hair back out.

2. I know everyone says brushing the hair dry is a nono, but IMO this has helped my daughter retain length. Go figure, lol. I ONLY brush her hair dry when it is stretched (from braiding or banding) and I must add moisturizer to it prior to brushing it. So I take a small section of her stretched out hair, add moisturizer (we use bee mine luscious) finger detangle her hair (gently) as much as possible, then use a modified Denman D3. This takes time and patience. I do this before I style her hair, her styles look better when I do this in my opinion.

You can view more of her routine here if you want to kind of get an idea of what I do.

http://beadsbraidsbeyond.blogspot.com/2009/10/as-routine.html

Maybe some of the things posted will make it easier for you.

Any other questions feel free to ask!

Hope that helped a bit.

NikG to the rescue!!!

Great advice everyone. Tessakaren, you'll be good to go once these steps are followed.