A 6-step guide to maintaining natural curls of a 2-year-old

The minute you think about curly hair — the most obvious picture that comes to your mind will be of a pretty girl with long locks of curly hair — just like Goldielocks.

But to break the stereotype — now think of a young boy, 2 years old, with lovely hazel curls — running around not even knowing how beautiful they look — yup that’s my son — — -

….and this article is to highlight the fun & madness that goes behind maintaining those curls and keeping a record of one more of our parenting tasks.

Who knows this may turn out to be a guide for Yajur to take care of his curls when he grows up!

Curly hair is known to get dry sooner, and for kids there is an added layer of sweat and dirt (note — my son loves playing in the sand pit) and so sticking to a proper wash routine becomes extremely important.

As a baby he had soft almost poker straight hair and it was relatively easy to maintain it — with alternate day oiling and washes, and it almost took no time for that baby hair to dry. But once he turned 1.5 years old, I presume the curls have been greedy to take away all the nutrition in his food.

I won’t be lying when I say — I was somewhere relieved that I have a boy — who would be easy maintenance. No matching clothes with clips and shoes, no pigtails with colour-coordinated rubber bands! I was not prepared for a bush on his head — growing thicker by the day.

And that’s when I started reading, learning and researching about curly hair and all that goes on behind the scenes to keep the gorgeous curls healthy and bouncy.

But which mom will make her darling son the guinea pig?! So all the experiments began on my own hair — and it worked! I started throwing out all the chemical based ‘smooth hair’ shampoos and resorted to ‘natural’ products that in the beginning made me feel ‘not so pretty’. But as i started accepting the look, I also started getting used to the fact that I may need to put in a little more time and effort to keep my son’s ‘most-talked- about’ feature.

Here’s a detailed version of the routine for Yajur’s hair care (after he turned 2 years old)

• Oiling his hair twice a week without fail — I ensure we use the hair oil from Mom’s Co. But have also used parachute coconut oil a couple of times while traveling and I have forgotten to pack his oil amongst the 100 other things that need to go in his bag. And when I say oiling — this includes a well deserved massage, nourishing almost every strand of hair, detangling the hair and tying it all into a man-bun.
• Leaving the oil to soak in for at least 30 minutes before the wash. — I usually feed him after the oiling session so I know that it will be a while.
• Because I don’t like the oily feel/smell (not that the oil smells…but still) I always wash his hair on days we apply oil. I use a generous amount of Cocomo Shampoo on his scalp and the strands of his hair to wash off all the dirt and oil.

• Then comes the Conditioner — while i understand parents will wonder why so many products for a kid — trust me the conditioner is extremely important for curly hair — without this the hair will not be able to lock in the moisture. We use ‘Curl Up Conditioner’ only on the hair strands and not his scalp. Leave it on for 5 minutes — while we wash off his body.
• For very long I used my fingers to detangle his hair — the conditioner making it easy, but of late we use a long toothed comb to detangle.
• Rinse off the hair, lightly towel dry and scrunch!

And wait for the magic of his natural hair to reveal itself in all splendour — and the best part — the little boy is absolutely oblivious of the beauty or all the effort behind it! 😛

Originally published at https://yajurchronicles.com.