Advicing nieces on how to treat curly hair

Monipen

I've written a number of posts about how I came to start transitioning after 17 years of straightening my hair, and also just never knowing anything about what to do with curly hair since I was a kid. My mom didn't know, and so I didn't know either until I just recently started doing research and found tons of information I had no clue of.

Anyway, like I said my mom being Latin American (I believe her great-grandmother was of African desent) she grew up being told curly hair is super difficult to manage and ugly and she always straightened it, she had no clue how to deal with my hair either. She would just brush my hair and keep it braided because that was easier. 

So now my sister has 3 daughters (one of them is just a baby) and their father is from a North African country. So as you can imagine, these girls' hair (my nieces) is even curlier than mine or my sis (I always had the curliest hair, my sis hair is wavy). But my sis I'm afraid is making the same mistakes my mom did, just out of ignorance, she just simply doesn't know anything about how to deal with curly hair. She brushes my nieces's hair and it's always looking huge(from volume) and frizzy. So I just heard that recently she got a straightening iron for the girls, to make things easier.

As I am still quite excited about my new discovery on how to deal with curly hair, I'd really like to share what I've learned with my sis. I think it would be such a pity if my nieces' hair would become damaged like mine, when they could be having really beautiful looking curls. I have to say that I've never seen what their curls could look like, because my sister always brushes their hair straight after washing it. But I can imagine they must have really beautiful curls.

So I'd like to ask for some advice on what I could tell my sis. Also I know my sister is very very busy, she's got 5 kids ranging from 10 years to just a couple of months. She doesn't have time for hair routines that are going to take a lot of time. It has to be simple. Also she cannot afford very expensive products. Unfortunately I don't live anywhere near my sister, so I don't see them that often. So the advice would be from a distance.

Oh, and I've got one more question: the girls are 10 and 6 years old. Can she use products from grown-ups or should she buy the ones that say for kids?

Gretchen

You're a sweetheart for wanting to help. I think the first thing is to first show them positive images of curlyheads in popular culture. So they know that it's ok to be curly.... that many beautiful, accomplished women wear their hair curly. That's often the first hurdle. 

Maybe show them this site and YouTube videos of women extolling curly hair. 

Then, you'll have to help them figure out which products work best for them. No, they don't have to use kids' products; they can use anything that works! 

Monipen

Gretchen said:

You're a sweetheart for wanting to help. I think the first thing is to first show them positive images of curlyheads in popular culture. So they know that it's ok to be curly.... that many beautiful, accomplished women wear their hair curly. That's often the first hurdle. 

Maybe show them this site and YouTube videos of women extolling curly hair. 

Then, you'll have to help them figure out which products work best for them. No, they don't have to use kids' products; they can use anything that works! 

Thank you for this advice Gretchen. That's what I will do. :-)

hmr1016

I would recommend keeping it simple with some detangler or a spray bottle with water and leave in conditioner in it. It's a step/product that kids can do on their own and very inexpensive. I had super knotty hair as a kid and would "fluff" my hair every morning with my Suave Kids detangler (it didn't do a great job of detangling but I liked the octopus cartoon on the bottle). 

ShannonCurled

I am a concerned mother of two adorable daughters. While I am obsessed with curls but i want to let them have hair style of their own choice. For Christmas, I am looking to gift them hair iron having capability of curler and straightener. As this will be the first hair tool they will be using so I am bit sick-worried about selection of right tool. I was about to order a hair iron **** curler (Mestar Iron) but have become skeptic after reading following review. https://ironfuss.com/tyme-iron-pro-vs-mestar-iron-pro/ Can someone please recommend me about authenticity of Mestar Iron Pro?