Brush your damn hair!

My darling 12y.o. stepdaughter comes back from spending the week at her mother's with the absolute worst matted hair I've ever seen.  Now you probably think I'm overreacting, but rest assured, you would think there was a small animal living in this giant mess.

Couple of things before I get into this... why do teenage girls hate the shower?  What is it about hot water and steam that sets them off?  This has been an on-going struggle for years, actually,  since I first met her.  It's a constant negotiation with getting her in the shower. Sometimes it's : "Go have a quick shower and we'll do your nails after" or "go rinse off (after swimming lessons) so we can watch a movie tonight" to which her rebuttal has been "I don't need to shower, I had swim today"  WTF?  Seriously, that's when I go through the damaging effects of chlorine on her (drying) skin and the potential of having her gorgeous, shiny blonde mane turn green from the dye.  So when she's in the shower, which lasts up to 1hour, we just keep our mouths shut and praise her for keeping her body film-free and relatively odorless.  She's a teenager after all...

FACTS:

1. There are 24inches of hair
2. It's gorgeous, shiny and blonde
3. The matted area has shortened the hair to 12inches
4. This is the result of at least 4-6weeks of unkept hair

Sadly, my Super-Stepmom radar has been too busy lately to notice that she's been tricking us for at least one month if not since school started (10weeks ago!).   Her MO? Showering without shampooing and quickly putting her hair up in a bun so we wouldn't notice the nest building up at the nape of her neck.

I mentioned her need to shampoo a few weeks ago cause I could smell (wwww) that it needed refreshing.  So yesterday, after our big welcome back bear hug,  I suggested we start brushing her hair out.  And for a change, she was very quick to agree and ran upstairs to shower.  When she came back to me, comb in-hand,  I didn't expect the grapefruit size matte of hair...

After trying to work through it for 2 hours, laughing at some jokes about white-girl dreadlocks and a bird nesting in there and a few tears.  I Googled everything about detangling hair, from wide-tooth combs to detangling spray, but nothing seemed to work.  We tried soaking it in conditioner overnight and are going to continue the painful process again tonight and every night this week... worst case is she's going to get an infamous bad childhood haircut we've all had.

I believe I'll let her bio-mom take her for that salon appointment.  :-)

Don't let this happen to your child's hair!