Hi everybody!

It’s all about hair today… For those who don’t understand the gibberish in the title – hair type 4 is what I like to call “pure african hair”. According to naturallycurly it is also known as coily hair which tends to be more prone to damage from a range of factors like combing. Miss L’s hair is a mix of all subsets of this type. Got it?

Now, my last post on this topic was all about our struggles with the little woman – it was constant tears, tangles and webbing, the hair was just so thick and unmanageable (IMO). Got to a point that I decided to texturise her hair which did stop the tears, for only a couple of weeks! And while I assumed the texturiser would just loosen her curls to reduce tangles, it straightened my toddler’s hair completely…

Her hair lost its gorgeous curl pattern and turned quite stringy, it literally repelled water and the webbing remained [like I wasn’t feeling guilty enough!].

Anywho, lets fast forward to a year after and we have a well established routine. This has seriously improved the texture and manageability of her hair. We can even change up hairstyle mid-week with little or no fuss!

Step 1 – Liquid

I never work with her hair when it’s dry, that’s just asking for trouble so I spray her hair first with water or leave-in conditioner (ensure natural ingredients if shop-bought) Picture below is a homemade combo of water+conditioner+olive oil.

Step 2 – Oil

Then I apply the oil to her scalp, usually a mix of any natural oils I have at home plus essential oils [olive oil is always the prominent oil] and massage the scalp to help stimulate growth – this literally takes a few seconds!

At this point I can also use a cream leave-in conditioner with natural products like the Cantu leave-in cream before the final step.

 Step 3 – Cream

After applying the oils, we then use our homemade shealoe cream (view how to make it here) as the final step. This acts as a heavy sealant to seal in all that moisturising goodness☺️

I also pay particular attention to the area between her natural kinks and texturised ends at this step as she’s now officially transitioning back to her natural coils and this is the point where we mostly experience webbing.

 

In addition, we wear a satin bonnet to sleep – main reason being most fabrics draws out the moisture from coils making it dry out so easily. We also both have satin pillowcases for those times the bonnet falls off or we just can’t find it.

 

So we aim to follow this every day and night. One of the main difference I noticed is that we can now touch the hair everyday without a massive meltdown plus she’s learning to love the kinks unlike previously where we only did haircare at the weekend.

There are other factors that have contributed to this improvement which I will talk about in later posts on toddler hair, this will also include our “go-to” bloggers for inspiration and tips so stay tuned!

Now I’m off to give myself some “hair therapy” and I hope you enjoyed my write-up hahahaha… Have a blessed weekend ahead y’all 😀

xoxo

Temi♥