Wash days can be dreadful for children with 4c hair because it can be very painful to wash and work through tightly coiled hair textures. This is why many parents and women with natural hair often don’t look forward to wash days.
This is why it’s best to start with detangled hair and wash your child’s hair in sections so that you can reduce pain and friction.
To get started, you can try one of these detangling conditioners or co-wash conditioners to soften and fully detangle your child’s hair before washing her hair.
Before we get into product recommendations, I’d first like to answer some frequently asked questions about detangling and co-washing children’s hair.
What is a co-wash?
A co-wash (conditioner only washing) is when you use a conditioner to clean your child’s hair instead of using a shampoo. This is totally different from skipping shampoo and heading straight to conditioning. It involves using a conditioner in place of a shampoo.
This method was popularized by hairstylist Lorraine Massey in her book “The Curly Girl Handbook”. This book was written for women who wanted to confidently wear their curly hair in its natural state by learning how to care for it. What’s key to point out about this book is that it was written at a time when “straight” hair was considered beautiful, while curly hair wasn’t.
In her book, Lorraine Massey recommends that women with curly hair should eliminate shampoos from their hair routine because they strip the hair of its natural oils, which can make curly hair look frizzy and dry. An important point to point out is that when this book was written and published, most shampoos had Sodium Lauryl Sulfates (SLS) in them. SLS is a primary cleansing agent in shampoos, formulated to remove dirt, product buildup, grease, and pollution from your hair. As a result, the hair will feel squeaky clean after wash.
While having freshly washed hair is not a bad thing, it can be bad news for curly hair. The reason is that most straight hair can feel excessively greasy, which is the reason why straight hair needs to be shampooed on a regular basis. However, curly hair is already lacking natural oils, and the last thing you want to do is to remove the little oil that’s in your hair. You want to preserve the oil as much as possible by eliminating SLS shampoos and replace them with conditioners that are formulated with oils and conditioning agents.
The good news though is that sulfate-free shampoos are now plentiful in the market. So if you are not comfortable with the “curly girl method”, you can still use shampoos in your hair, by using one of these sulfate-free shampoos.
Does a co-wash replace a shampoo?
Yes, a co-wash is meant to replace shampoo. Instead of shampooing your child’s hair, you will use a bottle of conditioner to wash her hair. Co-washes are meant to refresh the hair in-between shampoo washes. This way, you can quickly cleanse your hair without completely removing natural oils from your hair.
There are many reasons why you should consider co-washing your child’s hair instead of regular shampooing. One of the reasons can be to reduce excessive dry hair. Since conditioners are meant to condition the hair and restore moisture back into the hair strands, regular co-washing can help condition your child’s hair and keep it clean at the same time.
Co-washing is ideal for kids with curly, wavy, and coarse hair textures, as well as kids with color-treated hair. If your child has fine hair texture, you can reduce co-washing, as it may result in buildup, which can leave the hair feeling weighed down and flat looking.
You shouldn’t completely eliminate shampoos from your child’s hair routine, because her hair and scalp will still need a thorough cleanse at least once a month.
Can I co-wash every day?
Washing natural hair every day can result in “hygral fatigue”, which is a type of stress your hair goes through when you add water to it. Water causes the hair to expand, and when water evaporates from your hair and it dries out, it will shrink back up. So washing your hair every day will put too much stress on your cuticles and hair elasticity.
To go back to your question about co-washing daily, I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s not necessary. Also, you will end up with product buildup, which will leave your hair feeling dry and looking dull. This is why it’s recommended to shampoo your hair in-between co-washes so that you can remove all product buildup.
How do you co-wash a toddler’s hair?
Most kids co-wash conditioners will come with directions on how to wash a child’s hair but generally, this is how you would do it:
- Wet their hair
- Pour some conditioner on their hair
- Work the conditioner down their hair strands, making sure that it covers the entire hair length.
- Rinse the product from her hair
- Style as usual. You don’t need to do an additional conditioning step, because you didn’t use shampoo in your hair, and also because you just condition your hair.
Can you co-wash with any conditioner?
Ideally, you can use any conditioner within reach, but I would advise you to use a conditioner that has been formulated for co-washing to get the best results.
Ideally, you should minimize using conditioners with silicones such as dimethicones, especially if you’re not going to be shampooing her hair that often to remove silicone build-up from her hair.
Instead, check for a conditioner with the following ingredients:
- Proteins to coat and protect the hair from heat and other harsh elements
- Moisturizers to make the hair soft, smooth, and manageable
- Emollients such as shea butter to soften your child’s hair and reduce frizz
- Humectants such as honey and glycerin to help the hair absorb and lock in moisture
What is the easiest and painless way to detangle a child’s hair?
There is no other easier way to detangle a child’s hair other than to use a detangling conditioner. It does the job fast and without pain. Detanglers are specially formulated to smoothen the surface of the hair and reduce friction between the hair shafts to make the hair manageable.
How do you detangle really knotted hair?
If your child’s hair is severely knotted, your best bet would be to use a very good detangler such as the ones recommended in this post, along with a detangling brush or wide-tooth comb. You should part the hair in smaller sections and detangle each section at a time. You will need lots of patience and of course a lot of creativity to keep your child distracted the entire time.
For video instruction on how to detangle children’s hair, please watch this YouTube video by Kiana Hackett.
Can you use a conditioner as a detangler?
Yes, you can use a conditioner to detangle the hair as long as it has a good slip and also doubles as a detangling conditioner. However, for best results, it’s recommended to use a detangling conditioner such as the ones recommended in this blog post, so that you can have an easier detangling session.
One thing to note is that you can use a regular wash-out conditioner, co-wash conditioner, or leave-in conditioner as a detangler. As long as it has a good slip and leaves your hair detangled without breakage.
Is it better to detangle hair when wet or dry?
It’s always recommended to detangle hair when wet as opposed to detangling dry hair. As we all know, dry hair can be as crispy as potato chips, which means that they are more vulnerable to breakage than wet hair.
So to prevent the all too common breakage and tears that happen when detangling children’s hair, you should first hydrate the hair by spraying it with water, apply some detangling conditioner and gently detangle her hair.
There’s a common misconception out there that wet hair is weak, but one thing to note is that curly hair is more elastic and less susceptible to breakage when wet than it is when dry.
Again, remember the potato chip analogy. You can also compare dry curly hair to dry fusulli pasta versus cooked pasta. Dry pasta will break when snapped, but cooked pasta won’t. However, overcooked and mushy pasta will break up more easily than dry pasta. This is where the wet hair is weak misconception comes from.
So to prevent weak mushy hair, you should only detangle damp hair, and not on dripping wet hair. But as long as you have a good conditioner with a good slip in your hair, you won’t have to worry about breakage and damage when detangling your hair or your child’s hair.
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If you find a discontinued product on this list, please do let me know so I can keep this post updated. I’d also like to inform you that brands change their product packaging from time to time, which means that the product picture in this post might look a bit different from the retailer’s website at the time you decide to make a purchase.
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Hello,
I purchased ultimate detangling conditioner by Just For Me Curl Peace. And I wanted to hear your thoughts on this particular product.
Have you tried it? Did it not sit well with you?
Hi Kevin.
I’ve never tried the product. but it seems to receive great reviews online, which is why I included it on the list.