Alligator Tears

We have been struggling with combs and brushes lately. Getting our daughter to use a brush twice a day. We were in combat mode. Prevention mode. Survival mode.

I know my expectations were set high. After all, a 10-year old with thick hair down to her shoulder blades, is bound to say her hair is combed out when it is not. In fact, for me to brush it out, took more than a few minutes. Why? When her hair is pulled back and secured in a ponytail, one realizes how THICK her hair is. THICK. So when she is brushing, she isn’t brushing. I am talking about the fine nest of knots that develop at the nape of her neck. These tiny tangles, as I am sure they are at one time, grow rather large in a short span of time. I’m convinced they start when we don’t braid her hair at night and then grow when she doesn’t brush all the way through her hair. Letting her hair just hang all day probably did not help our cause either. They are intricate looking. They test my patience and hers. They are a tangled glob of hair. Finely tangled. Knotted and HUGE.

So after carefully, yet still very painfully, combing out the nest, we wash, condition, comb thoroughly and braid. We braid before she goes to bed so her hair stays neatly untangled. After a day in braids, she lets it fall freely and by the next bath time, we go through the torturous steps to rid her hair of another nest.

She wants to keep her beautiful long hair but I cannot take the pain she goes through each day. We try one suggestion, we try another. Unsuccessfully we end up right back where we started. Combing carefully through a nest of knots that seems to grow larger every time.

Our daughter cries alligator tears as she attempts to comb her hair.

Alligator tears are what I saw on our daughters’ face this past Sunday when I went into the bathroom to see how she was doing with preparing for a bath. Huge tears streaming down her red face. She was trying to brush out her hair and it was killing her. It was killing me. Hair should not be painful. So I suggested my last option. An option I have thrown out to her over the past several weeks.

Cut it off.

She agreed. So I cut six inches off her mane. She was a little worried when she saw the first cut. She even asked me if she could go look in the mirror and see the short and long of it. She returned to the chair and I cut away. She bathed and you know what, no more tears. Who needs Johnson and Johnson? Who needs gallons of Infusium conditioner? All we really needed was my pair of hair shears and an hour of time.



She is still beautiful! Perhaps a little older looking (I’m not fond of that); after all, she is only in middle school. She is short, sassy and loving it!