Help with Hair Time!

Please excuse our pajama's!

I am so excited to share with you that I finally have HELP with hair time!  With three little girls I often have my hands full caring for everyones hair.  Well, technically, I also do my sons hair and occasionally help with my hubby's hair when he buzzes it and needs to be cleaned up around the edges.  You can see, these hands are busy!

In the past I've given B and V some small tasks to help with hair time.  The most important one was that whoever WASN'T getting their hair done would occupy the baby.  Now that little E is getting older that isn't as important, but it was a BIG deal for awhile!  They also have helped thread beads onto beaders, which they LOVE to do.  But that is probably the extent of their ability to help.  Camera Guy isn't really into helping with hair time, but I always get him to cut yarn for me when I do yarn braids!  And he also is really great about making dinner or changing diapers or whatever else needs to be done when I am elbow deep in hair!

Recently I decided that B was getting old enough to start learning how to work with hair.  Of course, she can already braid, she practices making up hairstyles on dolls, barbies and ME!  But she has never gotten her hands involved in styling V's hair.  I realized it was time for me to let go of some of my "control" issues and start teaching B.  She is likely to have girls of her own one day, and she's gonna need to know this stuff!

I was a little worried about her ability to be SUPER gentle, and I am very protective of my girls hair.  I have been gently nurturing it for years now, and I didn't want B to get in there and start ripping through tangles.  But she was surprisingly gentle!  Maybe it is the empathy factor, as she knows what it feels like to be the one in the chair.  But she is not normally that careful with her dolls hair!  It was really great to teach her how to gently work through tangled areas. It just felt like such an important moment  - mom passing things down to her daughter.  Kind of a "coming of age" moment.

I have to admit I am a baby steps kind of person.  So I only had her help me take out V's style.  She was pretty slow.  She got one braid/cornrow taken out for about every 3 I took out.  But in the end that meant 7 braids that I didn't have to take out myself!  That had to have cut at least 30 minutes off my time!  Now that's AWESOME!  I will certainly continue to have her assist me in taking out styles and maybe some day she will be so good at it that I can have her do it by herself and then I can step in to wash and style!

As she gets older I will start teaching her how to put the styles in also.  I can teach her all about what products to use and when, and why we need to be careful with the fragile hair line, and, well, basically everything I am sharing with you!  But remember, baby steps!






Do you have older girls that help with younger sisters? Have they shown interest in learning to style? How do you impart your knowledge on to the "next generation?"

Katie