Knots...

I took a phone call yesterday from a frantic mother. Her daughter is 8 years old and has a huge snarly knot in the back of her head and she doesn't know what to do any more to get it out.  Any suggestions?  Yes.  Bring her in so someone can look at it and go from there.  It's kind of hard to do say anything over the phone.  She agreed and brought her in later in the day.

The little girl's hair was pulled back in a loose braid.  At first glance, things didn't seem all that bad.  And then....I sat her in my chair, took the braid out, and immediately said "Why would you do this to your hair??  If this doesn't come out, I may have to use the clippers on your hair."  I grabbed a pick and started working on her dry hair.

Some of the knots started coming out.  On the sides of her head wasn't too bad, compared to the HUGE knot (bigger than her actual head) I had yet to tackle.  This poor kid wound up in tears because my pulling on her knots was causing serious pain, so I took her to the sink to see what I can wash out and loosen up.

I washer her hair (as best as I could) 3 times to try to loosen things up.  I held the sprayer on the actual root of the knot for a good minute, seeing if the pressure would loosen things up.  Then, I worked some conditioner into her hair.  I bring her back to my chair and dig in again.  This time, things go much easier.

Over all, it took me an hour and 15 minutes to deal with that knot.  I had to cut out two spots...one of them a smaller area, however the knotting went all the way to the top of her head.  The other one I (Literally) chopped at was the jumbo knot in the back.  "THWAP"  went the chunk I cut out when I tossed it to the floor.  Dad came in and took that clump of hair and kept it, to remind daughter of what happens when you don't take care of your hair.  Once I got her hair all combed out, there were parts that WEREN'T EVEN WET.  That's how bad that knot was.

After I cut the basic shape of her hair, I took her back to the sink and proceeded to wash her hair, AGAIN.  This time, I was able to get it CLEAN.  Back to my chair to finish the hair cut.

The entire time I was dealing with her hair, I found out that mom is a ding bat....and has no clue what to do with her child.  Dad was incredibly frustrated with the both of them, and took what I said to heart.  I also think that the daughter will NOT be doing this again, any time too soon, since it was such a painful experience.  The kicker??  Mom & Dad had just pulled all those knots out just two weeks ago.  Daughter was using a soft bristle hair brush to deal with her hair, which it wasn't able to do.  This child has enough hair for 4 people.  It's fine (which is why it knotted so badly) and it's slightly wavy.  It was also 3/4 of the way down her back, all one length, with a little bit of bang.

Were these people dirty??  Absolutely not.  All were very clean, reasonably well educated.  However, they were trusting the 8 year old to do a very daunting, intimidating job.  Even better was the fact that Mom washes the kid's hair for her, so she knew what was happening, and did nothing to fix the situation until they brought her in to me.

The end result:  Her hair was cut to the bottom of her neck (her choice) in a cute, fun hair cut, making it 5 bazillion times easier for her to take care of her hair, which made everyone happy.  And, for the first time in a long time, her hair was CLEAN.  To the scalp clean.  One thing I've learned from this:  I need to charge WAY more for dealing with that mess than what I did.  Let's hope I only see her for hair cuts and not to get that knot out again.

Lesson learned.