Hair Abuse

Our case manager that helps us maintain our foster care license was over the other day. She usually comes by when the kids are in school, so this was the first time that she met Henry and Georgia. The licensing case manager (LCM) has hair like Georgia's so when she said, "You're doing a good job with her hair," I felt really happy and relieved. It's taken me quite some time to figure out how to maintain and style Georiga's beautiful kinky curly hair and it was nice to get some positive feedback.

LCM then told me about how she has another foster family that she works with that is comprised of white foster parents and biracial foster kids. Someone called in an ABUSE report on the foster family because the kids' hair was looking messy. The foster parents just didn't know how to take care of their hair and instead of offering to help or giving the family some advice, someone called in an abuse report. Yowza!

Maintaining Georgia's hair really does have a lot of steps and there are a lot of things that you need to know in order to get the best result. I still haven't figured out the exact right products and procedures for keeping her hair at its best. As of right now, here is what I do for Georgia's hair every Saturday night and Sunday morning:

1. Saturday night before dinner I take Georgia's old hair style out. Then I put olive oil (from the kitchen) all over her hair and scalp and let it sit on her head through dinner time until her after-dinner bath.

2. I wash her hair with a natural shampoo that doesn't have sulfates and doesn't leave a buildup on the hair. I use Dr. Bronner's soap. I love that stuff.

3. Then I condition Georgia's hair. I let the conditioner sit in her hair while I wash Henry and Elise and then I rinse the conditioner out of her hair as the very last thing before we pull the bath tub plug.

4. I gently pat the excess water out of Georgia's hair (no rough towel drying!), then apply a leave-in conditioner all through her hair.

5. Next, I spray her hair with (a lot) of detangler and gently comb her hair with a wide-toothed comb.

6. I rub coconut oil all through her hair (it's called oil but it's very waxy) and comb her hair again.

7. Then I section Georgia's hair into about 10 little puffs and comb out each section and put cloth ponytail holders down the entire length of each section of hair. This process is called "banding" and it helps straighten her hair slightly for styling the next morning. Georgia sleeps Saturday night with her hair sectioned and banded.

8. Sunday morning after breakfast the process starts over again. Take out the ponytail holders. Leave-in conditioner. Detangler. Combing. Coconut oil. Combing.

9. Then I style. I don't do anything fancy, believe me, but the styling process takes about an hour and a half. And hopefully her hairstyle will last until the following Saturday evening.

And that's what you have to do if you want to NOT abuse your foster daughter around here.