Hair, again

Many of you know and may remember previous posts regarding my struggles with Akila and her hair. She has always had hair that is very course and breaks easily. I admit totally that I am not the best at keeping it moisturized as it is a power struggle I like to avoid. She hates to have grease or oil put in her hair, even when I explain that it will help her hair to grow.

When her hair is in any type of style, she always has to mess with it, and for this reason, she loses even more hair. If it is in single braids with beads on it, she is pulling on the braids, trying to get it to hang in her eyes (isn't long enough for that, but that is the style, hair in the face). She will sit on the bus and undo an entire hair doo, which took me a couple of hours to put in. It drives me crazy.

On Wednesday night, Michael was working late and I had to load up all the kids to go to Imani's piano lesson, which is less than 5 minutes from our house. I brought Akila, Hezekiah and Zeke to the park nearby during the 30 minute lesson. During the 5 minutes it took to drive from the park on 44th St, to the piano lesson on 39th St, to our house on 26th St, Akila and I had a huge fight about her hair, which I had just done on Sunday evening. She wanted to undo the hair style and put a new one in. Upon the completion of our 5 minute drive, she had taken out all the beads and was starting to take out the rubber bands at the base of her head.

It was after 7 pm, which is when we start the bedtime routine. I had more than once calmly explained to her how there was not time to do her hair this evening, and that we don't do that on school nights. She kept on telling me that she would do her hair, I didn't need to worry about it. Well there is no way in the world that would work. She wanted to put it in a pony tail, it is not even close to long enough for that, which I had repeatedly explained. She would put it in two pony's then; not long enough for that. I tried to not say too many times that it isn't long enough for any of that because she is always messing with it, won't put grease in it, etc. Those facts weren't helping with her state of mind.

At one point, I said fine, do whatever you'd like. If you want to go to school tomorrow looking really silly, that is fine. I was putting Imani in the shower as she was filthy, and thinking about how all the black women who work at the school would be judging me if she went to school with a really goofy hair doo. I decided I needed to stick to my guns on the hair, not to mention that I think Akila would sit in bed for hours messing with her hair. I then told her to leave her hair alone and do her dolls hair. Didn't work. She went nuts, or should I say kept on going nuts.

Eventually, we compromised and added some bobbles on to her hair style. Even that was looking funny as we had to use 3 different types of bobbles. It was a very festive looking hair doo, I should have taken a picture. It probably took 10-15 minutes. While I was putting the bobbles in, Michael got home to what seemed like a calm household. He missed the previous 30 minutes of raging. I am so temped to shave her head and give her a beautiful short afro. Imani has dred locks now and I am loving it. Akila doesn't want them. May be time for a change.