What a huge issue hair can be for white parents and their black
children. Ha! Girls really. My son has almost no interest in his hair except
for when we get out the clippers and cut it—then he wants to know if he can
watch the iPad. End of story.
But girls. GAWD. I can remember being a huge PIA for my Mom when she did my hair but then go and add a trauma background to being a girl and
“It’s time to do your hair.” becomes, “I’m scared that this bonding time
together is going to lead to feelings of trust and that can’t happen because
when I trust someone they turn around and leave me. If you leave me I’ll die.”
Therefore: Hair=Death.
Another scenario can be, “It’s time to do your hair.” And
the kid can think, “I’m being showered with attention and I don’t deserve it.”
and they will unconsciously try to recreate the wild storm that is within
them—and take you along for the ride.
That’s a whole lot of YIKES surrounding hair time isn’t it? But I'm learning! It's taken me 5 years to get to this point: understand the fear that surrounds special time with you as the parent and don't rush it. I wish I had understood this 5 years ago.
Loreli and I have had our share of YIKES in the nearly 5 years
she’s been home. In the beginning it wasn’t too bad. She was used to having her
hair combed and braided at the orphanage.
When she came home we did all kinds
of things, starting off with easy, pulling the front back and leaving
everything else loose and curly to bantu knots, box braids, and twists.
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| Curly baby hair :-) |
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| Pom-poms |
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| Look how close in size they were! Daniel was 2.5 years old here and Loreli 4.5 years old. |
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| Bantu knots |
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| Box braids |
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| Loose and darling |
She started fussing a bit after the first few months. Then the
fuss turned to crying which turned to screaming and crying. I finally decided
that it wasn’t worth the fight and cut her hair short. And that’s the way it
stayed for quite a while. There were bigger issues to deal with, hair was about
last on the list.
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| OMG--how cute! |
Then we started to grow it out and the screaming and crying
returned but in a bigger girl’s body. She acted as if she were dying…see above.
I remember three good times with her hair--dress rehearsal for a ballet show and
then the actual show. The girls were supposed to wear their hair in a bun and
she was excited that she could too. The third time was when we had a teenage girl from Ethiopia braid her hair.
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| She looks 15 here doesn't she? She was 7. |
The screaming and crying turned to raging and crying so I
talked to her about locs and she agreed. We went to a woman in Denver and she
did fairly large two strand twists that apparently were going to turn into
locs…ginormous locs. Who would want locs that big? I read and read
while the twists got fuzzier by the day and when I was done I used a rug hook
and locked her hair myself. Darling. She ran through our park yelling, “My hair
swings now!” Yay! Success! Until I had to relock the new growth and we were
back where we started.
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| Locs |
After a year of locs and the relocking process she
decided that cutting off the locs and having hair short enough that she could
do it herself was better.
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| Pretty and sassy no matter what her hair is doing :-) This was taken the day we cut her locs off. She said, "I look like myself again!" |
This past year it’s been slowly growing out and she has been
keeping it in a (mostly) presentable TWA (teeny weenie afro). In the beginning
she would use headbands to keep it up off her forehead
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| I tried my hand at face painting--what fun! |
but by the middle of the
school year it was getting so long that she would just plop a headband in the
middle of the top of her head and that was that. I kept my mouth shut and
focused on our relationship. When
her hair became too unkempt, I talked of cutting it shorter so she could comb
it and that had her working harder on it.
And that brings us to now. The Family Intervention Program
gives me renewed hope (yet again) that I can help her with her hair. Our very
first “time-in” was about her hair and how she treated me like the devil in
disguise when I did it but everyone else who did her hair, she was fine with.
It was time to deal with this. “You will not treat me with such disrespect when
you treat everyone else like they are doing you a huge favor by doing your
hair. Enough is enough.”
I started by having her hair trimmed by my hair lady. She
was fine during that of course. Then doing the easy front pom-poms and leaving
the back loose, like I used to in the beginning. It took no more than 15
minutes and she was able to control herself that long. Yay! My favorite was the
first or second time pulling the front back she said to herself, “MUST stay
calm Loreli!” She was really trying.
Then Gladys came and straightened it using a straightening
comb. I had no idea that straightening combs would burn off the ends of her
hair and leave them crispy and unable to curl. I’ll have to find a product that
protects against high heat before we try that again. In the meantime Gladys can do twists and braids.
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| Wow. I had never seen her with straightened hair before! |
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| First "straight hair" ponytail and bangs. |
Yesterday: first BIG hair day for Loreli and me. I asked
around, watched a bunch of youtube videos and learned how to
“shingle” hair. It
took me probably an hour of research, an hour to braid her hair the night
before, after her shower to keep it tangle free, and an hour and a half to
actually do it in the morning. It’s cute. Cuter than the always-slightly-matted-TWA
she’s been wearing for a year now. I think it will be cuter when it gets a little longer.
Daniel understood what was happening, on my end anyway, and
said, “Why does Loreli get to do this? It’s like a gift.”
Good Lord, my 7 year old son is learning about the gift of
time. Something my 9 year old cannot figure out.
“Well Daniel, girls need to have more stuff done with their
hair because it's so much longer. Now that we're doing this Family Intervention Program I can do this with Loreli’s
hair when I couldn’t before. If you want I can do your hair too.”
“Okay!” and he plopped himself down in the chair next to Loreli.
I sprayed his hair, put in a little bit of product, and
worked it in. Then I told him how handsome he was, sniffed his hair, kissed his
cheek, said he was yummy and he was done and off and running again.
How did Loreli do?
I saw an attitude come back today that I’ve not seen in a
week. She started getting huffy with me toward the end of our shingling
session. She didn’t have tangles because I had braided her hair the night
before and I was only finger combing with a ton of product so she wasn’t in any
pain. I spoke to her alter ego and said, “Hey
Hiro, what’s going on?”
Silence.
“I’m wondering if Hiro is visiting us because this is a
bonding time and that can be pretty scary.”
Silence and a grumpier face.
Sigh. I really had hoped that we could get through this
without a fuss. Loreli was a grumpy, angry little girl for the next 10 minutes—no
words—just moaning, groaning, sighing, slumping and sitting up over and over,
working herself into what I knew was coming next—a rage. I was
internally working myself up too. Suddenly I remembered the rules—boundaries! No
disrespect!
“Loreli. You will stop all of this RIGHT NOW. I expect a good
attitude and a happy look on your face!” Sadly, I didn’t say it in a calm
voice. Boo. I have years of background to overcome too.
Loreli sat up straight and put on a strange smile. I continued
to do her hair and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She looked…self-satisfied.
My little explosion was apparently just what she wanted. In typical traumatized
child fashion she found a way to make her calm external world as turbulent as
her interior world.
Ah well, at least it was short lived and not the raging that
she used to do. Eventually the self-satisfied smile disappeared and she said
softly, “Sorry Mommy.”
“Thank you Loreli.”
Off and on the rest of the day though she continued with a
bit of strange attitude. She felt scared to me. There was no overt “bad” behavior,
just little things like acting grumpy when asked to clean up her toys. Not
eating much of her dinner, which is really rare. Nothing major really, just
stuff I hadn’t seen in awhile. Thinking about it today I realize that I need to
step back a bit. An hour of braiding the night before and an hour and a half in
shingling was just too much for her to take at this point. It brought up too
much fear for her. She handled me braiding her hair into two French braids the
other day so that is probably the extent of it for right now. As she learns to trust
us more then we can work into the styles that take longer.
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| Double French braids |
Many successful hair times will slowly teach her that she’s
safe and I’m not going to leave her. I need to remember clicker training dogs
and horses. There is absolutely NO point in showing an animal what the end
trick/result will be and expecting them to get it. I have to break it down into
tiny, happy successes and that will lead to a larger success later on.
And yes, before you freak out and yell at me, I did just
intentionally compare my child’s training to animal training. Dog, horse,
human, we are all animals. :-)
