The Secret to Brushing Tangled Children's Hair

Once upon a time I hated American Girl Dolls. This time was very, very recent. And truth is I still dislike their massive commercial nature. We have an American Doll Store in my town and it is insane to walk in there. I'd hoped to keep Princess Fierce away from them forever but she was lured in a few months ago. Fortunately she has her momma's thrifty streak and even at five could not fathom the need for a $100 dollar doll when a very similar one was available at Tuesday Morning for less than $20. And the Tuesday Morning doll, from the Target line, looks like her.

She scored that bargain doll for her birthday. Here she is with it the very weekend after her birthday taking Remember on a hike to see waterfalls. But do you see the back of Remember's ponytail? That's a plastic hair rat nest and the doll is only days old. Uh-oh. Princess Fierce was not happy with how fast her hair was tangling.

A quick turn to the Interwebs and I found a solution. A wig brush and a mist of water. Whatever you do don't dare touch their tresses with the plastic toy brushes sold with the dolls. We headed off to our local Sally's Beauty Supply to score an inexpensive wig brush. Only $3.99. A quick mist with water and strokes of the right brush and Remember's hair was smooth and ready for a braid.

But this post is not about how to brush a doll's hair. Nope, this is about a bigger problem.

My own daughter's hair. This is what I'm dealing with when Princess Fierce wakes up. And guess what? She HATES me brushing her hair. She also hates brushing it herself. She also is not a fan of headbands or barrettes and will tolerate a pony tail on rare occasions. Rare! So this means daily we battle over just trying to brush her hair. Regarding style, it just hangs free and wild...like her spirit. I will even confess some days I don't have the fight in me so we just skip brushing and this is her hair for the entire day. Bad mommy!

But then this brush entered our lives this week and it never would've happened without that trip to the American Girl store.

And this brush, made for wigs, glides through fine little girl tangles!

Not only does she now brush her own hair willingly she even allows me to use this brush. She exclaims that it does not pull or hurt! I'm not sure how this works. Must have something to do with the way the bristles are loops.

From tangled mess to smooth tress in seconds. My 10yo son who sports long hair like a 1970s surfer also says this brush is much better than our normal ones. I went back to Sally's and bought another for the kids' bathroom so they won't have to steal the doll's brush everyday.

If you too have a child that hates the morning hair brush give this a try. I'd love to hear if it works for you too.

And since I don't normally post about hair but have you here I wanted to share one more thing...

I found this great post on no heat curls! What? Yes, it's true. You can curl your hair without heat or sleeping on rollers. Princess Fierce wanted to try and this is a big step as you can imagine after how I described her lack of hair stylings. It was very easy to wrap her hair around the hair band. And that alone looked like a super cute style. She liked it because it wasn't tight and kept  her hair back. In the morning she had CURLS! Almost too many curls. Princess didn't like the bounce by her face so I simply twisted it back and secured it loosely with a barrette. The style was classic and lasted all day long. Check out Paper Mama's site for the how to. She's my new blog crush for all things photo, life and hair.