Cherish My Daughter

Many of you have requested a video so I'm doing one, but you should know that I'm NOT giving credit to any particular product for the success I've had with the girls' hair. I think we fall prey so much to false marketing and many of us will buy anything that promises to increase growth or eliminate dryness. I've had a cabinet full of products in the past that did absolutely NOTHING toward fixing the problems I was experiencing with my girls' hair. Their hair remained the same length year after year and was very dry and brittle. I had to change my expectations, my methods and be committed to just letting their hair do what it was designed to do. This can be very hard, especially when many cultures use the straight aesthetic to measure beauty. In my experience, trying to keep vibrant nappy hair smooth and perfectly coifed at all times is a recipe for dryness which often leads to breakage. People who know me in real life can testify that I am at home with A LO...

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I once thought there was something special about Summer, because our nappy hair thrived so much more. I always expected my hair to grow more in the warmer months. I'm not sure our scalps do something special as the temperatures rise, but nappy hair loves moisture. It's like a rainforest, growing lush with all the rain, and steamy humidity. I think if we avoid frying our heads in the hot sun, our strands become supple and we may retain more length. Winter is the exact opposite. As much as we love to douse our heads in the warmer months and run outside while it's still damp--we imagine we'll all catch our deaths if we do the same in Winter. We may, especially if our bodies aren't accustomed to it. We can generally be reluctant to wash our hair as much. I know I've told myself in the past that our hair wasn't as dirty because we weren't sweating as much. I'd wash less and expose our hair to less moisture. I wanted styles to last longer and wa...

The following are things I've tried and learned from personal experience. I encourage you to adapt my methods to your situation. I don't use swim caps because in my experience, they don't keep our hair perfectly dry if we like to dunk our heads under water. My girls stay under the water. Swim caps work best to keep our hair out of the pool . I also find plastic/rubber swim caps to be extremely hot on our heads. I imagine my daughters' brains cooking under them on a hot day. I never use them when we're outside. I'd use them inside if the facility requires them. Chlorine can be very drying to nappy hair. Your child's hair will be fine after repeated exposure to chlorine if you are careful to protect it from the chlorine before swimming AND take care to wash it away after. Never allow chlorine to stay in your child's hair indefinitely. I've been in situations where I didn't wash until the next day, and my girls' hair was fine, but I...

Hair time can be a nightmare when we're working with really young babies and active children who'd prefer to be elsewhere. I was really overwhelmed with my first. Whenever I asked other mothers what worked for them, I was told to wait until my baby was sleeping to style their hair. Unfortunately my daughter always woke up the minute I started manipulating her hair, and if you're anything like me, you'll take a messy head over missed sleep any day. I've used different methods at different ages. Below is a list of suggestions to consider while grooming your baby's hair, followed by older children. When picking a style always have a realistic expectation of how long your child is physically able to sit for the style. Expect some interruptions. You may have to break the styling session up into several segments. Try to avoid waiting until you have to be somewhere in a short amount of time before moving to style your child's hair. How much maintenance doe...

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Adding castor oil to your hair along with your cheap conditioner may give it more slip power (the ability to make the shingles on the hair shaft lie down so the strands will slide by each other and tangle less). There may be a definite method to making this trick work. Spritz a tangled section of hair (no bigger than 3x3 inches) with water. Slather about a quarter size dollop of castor oil directly to the hair. Top that with the same amount of conditioner. Detangle the section starting from the ends. I purchase my castor oil from Walmart (near the vitamins) OR a health food store. For more details on this check out my video on Cherish My Daughter channel .

In the beginning I was amazed to discover I could groom my daughters' hair easily-- from shampoo to deep conditioning---with products I have sitting around in my pantry. I've never tried the entire process from start to finish solely with these items, instead I alternate pantry items with commercial ones. However, there's no reason it shouldn't work if the hair is responding well. I started trying pantry items out of concern for all the chemicals we find in commercial hair products. We hear so much about things being carcinogenic. Some of us are so overwhelmed by the information we put it all on ignore , figuring we may as well just enjoy life, because everything causes cancer. Others of us go completely organic, and spend a small fortune. Personally, I'm somewhere slightly past the middle, inching towards more natural items. I'm ever cognizant that the skin, our largest organ, absorbs so much. My girls are young, and I want to expose them to as few synthe...

I'm excited to introduce The Nappy Princess Spa , my tutorial videos in helping apply everything you're learning here. You can view the five part Hair Washing Series on our YouTube channel now. I'm working on more series to add, including styling. I know many of us need more than pictures to pick up a new skill. I hope you find my tutorials helpful. Your feedback is welcomed.

400 years without a comb Watching the above video brought up so many emotions for me. I graduated from Cornell University just three credits shy of attaining a minor in African American Studies. I took my first course as an elective, and was so amazed by the information I was learning for the first time despite attending some of the best schools in my state. In college, I kept asking "how and why" the experience of African Americans in this country could have been so horrific. It was incomprehensible to me that anyone exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ could tolerate the institution of slavery, and the continued racism we still struggle with today. I suffered conflicting emotions of horror, disbelief and rage. At times I walked around campus with a huge chip on my shoulder. I needed somebody to confront, but my Caucasian peers were so far removed from the historical connection I was feeliing, it seemed I was making mountains out of mole hills. I was often asked wh...

Keep it simple Sister. Sometimes when we're exposed to so much information about hair care, we think we need to do it all right away. I experienced this after spending a lot of time on the internet researching deep conditioning treatments for my own hair. I found everything from expensive salon grade products, to exotic international concoctions, to do it yourself mixtures made from ingredients from the ordinary kitchen pantry. I got great results using some of these on my hair, and imagined it would work the same way for my daughters. One day I decided to treat us all to a home spa day . We all changed into our bathrobes, and got in line for a special mud treatment. I had used bentonite clay on my hair several weeks previously, and loved the resulting softness and sheen. I imagined we'd have a special time pampering ourselves, and gain gloriously conditioned hair. The girls watched with interest as I grabbed a ceramic bowl while explaining something about the composition...

I'll never forget the first time I saw Mocha Girl One (HmG) . She was an emergency c-section, and had to spend several days in NICU. She was born four days past her estimated due date and looked huge in her incubator. I imagined her to be especially delicate and feminine. I couldn't wait to frill her up, and more importantly to do her hair ! The only reason she wasn't sporting a barrette the day we took her home from the hospital, was because the one I brought to match her lacey outfit, slid right out. Mocha Girl One's baby hair was silky straight and fine. As the weeks rolled by, it became wavier until she had a lovely curly fro. I washed it all the time . I brushed it several times a day . I tried snap clips, and moved to velcro barrets when the clips slid out. I bought a different head band for every outfit. Meanwhile her curls continued to wind tighter and tighter. I kept everything in a pretty box, dubbed the hair bin . I was really frustrated at not b...

When I was a little girl, I loved to cover my head with a towel, and dance around the house flinging it back, and forth as though I had the longest hair in the world. I wanted hair like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Whether on TV, movies, books, or magazines, I was drawn to long hair that hangs. I thought this was only a little mocha girl thing, but I've observed this behavior in little girls of various ethnicities. Everyone seems to love long flowing hair. It is beautiful. I'm not against dressing up and playing pretend. It's fun to have a different experience sometimes. We can play with wigs, and weave extensions in our hair on occasion to enjoy something new. Personally, I've never used extensions, weaves, and wigs on my daughters. While I don't condemn mothers who occasionally use braid extensions, I've even stopped using them in my own hair to send my daughters a message. My main concern is that we don't want our girls to cling to these thi...

Oils don't moisturize nappy hair. Many Mocha Moms remember sitting on the floor between an older woman's knees to have their scalp greased and hair oiled. We've all made the mistake of trying to moisturize nappy hair with grease and oil. Some naps thrive anyway, but I never experienced optimal nappy hair until I began to moisturize with water. The hair shaft is full of tiny openings. When applied to dry hair, greases, and oils coat the shaft and seal the openings. This prevents the absorption of water. Water makes the nappy hair shaft moist and supple. Oil can make it outwardly greasy, crispy and brittle over time. Grease and oils play an important part in the moisture process. They lock in moisture. While nappy hair loves water, it evaporates from the shaft quickly. Moisture is balanced when we are able to trap small amounts of water in the shaft before it evaporates. This is achieved by applying oil to damp or wet hair. Some oils are thicker and heavier than ot...

I seldom choose to style my daughters' hair in tiny box braids. They are time consuming to put in and remove. I usually save this style for special occasions. It's a big favorite for stretchability. We can achieve about an 85% stretch with tiny braids, even though I put them in without first stretching the hair with heat. Tiny braids also mimic loose hair and can be worn in variations everyday. My girls love putting their hair in a pony tail, removing it and putting it back up again a million times a day. Tiny braids permit my daughters to enjoy the freedom of independent styling without filling their loose hair with knots. I'll never forget Mocha Girl Two's (age 7) first experience with tiny braids. I can't remember where we were going when I decided Mocha Girl Two was finally ready for tiny braids. She sat perfectly, for hours as I put them in. We all thought the finished style was spectacular. Mocha Girl Two was ecstatic. She danced around and swiveled ...

Frustration is an enemy I greatly respect when detangling my daughters' hair. It can cause me to rip through knots and reach for the scissors when I encounter resistance. I also watch out for haste. I'm tempted to take ineffective short cuts when I'm rushing. These lead back to frustration. What a shame to sacrifice the health of my daughters' hair because I chose to approach a task I lacked the time to do right. Nappy hair is easier to detangle when we approach the process deliberately from ends to root. My girls and I began to enjoy our sessions more when we set aside a special time just for hair maintenance. On Hair Day , I make sure the answering machine is ready to pick up my calls. We set up a comfortable location. If I'm sitting, I make sure my daughters are positioned so my back doesn't start hurting. I generally like to stand behind a high stool which lifts my girls to the perfect height. From the time my daughters were little, I trained them to sit sti...