Life Lessons Learned: The Chronicles of Hair

The story begins several weeks ago when I discovered that Heavenly had not been washing or brushing her hair…in weeks. She has gorgeous, thick, curly hair and I suspect that it was slightly overwhelming for her to handle. She is also at that delicate age where spending time on personal grooming is not yet a priority, but the responsibility of it falls on her since she is independent enough to do it. Mix that in with being in an unfamiliar place with virtual strangers who happen to be white, and it was the perfect storm.

I also know that much of the blame falls on me because I am the parent and I am completely baffled by how I could go several weeks without knowing about the tangle of hair on her head.

I mean..I’m not stupid, right?

Right?

Now, I had several well-meaning people on my Instagram reach out to me and tell me that it’s obvious I wasn’t respecting her ethnic heritage and I had made a huge mistake by not helping her with her hair. I was very humbled by this, and after being offended for a bit, I realized that they were probably right. I have no idea how to take care of ethnic hair. I had never felt more white.

Lesson #1: Parenting is humbling. Foster parenting is even more humbling. 

Lesson #2: Parenting other people’s children is HARD. 

Here I thought I had done a great job of taking her to store, buying all the “right” products, asking her if she needed help (the answer was a firm NO), and making sure that she was doing her hair on schedule. She would emerge from the bathroom, tell me she had done it…and I believed her.

Lesson #3: Don’t trust an 11 year old as the final authority. Be humble and gentle in double and triple checking the things that they are saying, give them the benefit of the doubt…but don’t trust them. That’s what parenting is for…we give them the responsibility and then we come along beside them to make sure that they are taking on the responsibility well.

Now, in my defense…she is an 11 year old girl. A different ethnicity or not. We also discovered that she was telling us she was brushing her teeth, but after discovering her toothbrush still packed in her suitcase from vacation a week before, we realized that she was also not telling the truth about that. And teeth aren’t ethnic. #sotheresthat

Lesson #4: Ethnic hair is very different and even if I have an older child who is independent enough to do it herself, I need to learn the ins and outs of doing it.

So we got to know our girl a little bit better. We learned how she responds when she is afraid, what kinds of responsibilities she is not a fan of, what we can trust her with and what we still need to be the responsible parties for.

Lesson #5: Hard times and trials help us get to know our foster kids better. And they help them get to know us better, too.

After we discovered that there was an issue with Heavenly’s hair, we took action immediately. My Mom and I spent all day for three days trying to comb out the tangles. We took numerous trips to the store and I humbly asked several people in the store to help me out with what products might work best. We combed so much hair that I had blisters and bruises on my fingers from holding the comb. At this point, I was in a fairly hard place. I knew that I had to shoulder the responsibility of this. If it had been my own biological child, I would have simply cut her hair after day 1. But I knew I couldn’t give up on Heavenly’s beautiful locks of hair. I called the caseworker in tears, mostly afraid that I was going to have a report against me and that they would accuse me of negligence. I mean…how can I have missed it? How?

Then, I did one of the hardest things I’ve done. I called Heavenly’s Mom and told her. I was afraid that she would be angry and upset at me, that she would blame me and make a huge fuss to our caseworker. I was afraid that my stint as a foster Mom was over.

She was so gracious to me. She was so kind and understanding and encouraging to me. She gave me some more ideas of how to work on it at home. I scoured the internet for advice which turned out to be helpful, but also gave me lesson #4.

Lesson #6: White people give terrible advice. We also know nothing about ethnic hair care. We just have no clue what it is like to parent children of other ethnicities until we have actually done it.

After trying to comb out her hair for several more hours, I gave up. My other children were melting down for lack of attention, my house was a disaster and I was in physical pain from hours of sitting in the same position combing out her hair. My Mom, however, continued to comb it for at least another 8 hours. While my Mom was combing it out, I called Heavenly’s Mom back and asked her if there was a hair salon that she would feel most comfortable with me using.

Lesson #7: Mom knows best. Even when that mother has essentially had her parenting rights taken away, she still knows best and can give good advice.

I made an appointment and then I did something that I made me have a million scary butterflies in my stomach: I drove to Heavenly’s house and picked up her Mom to go with us. Her Mom shouted directions at me (she wasn’t SHOUTING, she just has one volume: LOUD) and we headed into districts of Dayton that I didn’t even know existed. I gripped the steering wheel and prayed that God would keep me safe and asked that I look a little less white? Please? And also to help me not make any huge, terrible cultural mistakes. We arrived at the place and it was closed. So we hopped back into the car and drove even deeper into Dayton.

Finally, we found another place that was open and they took Heavenly back. They washed, rinsed and began to comb her hair, but after 10 minutes, they explained that it was going to have to be cut. Heavenly was understandably upset about this, but there was no other option. I was so relieved that the hair stylist had arrived at the same conclusion as me, because I was feeling like maybe I was giving up too soon. Maybe I needed to spend a few more days combing out the hair? But when the stylist agreed that it needed to be cut, it helped me feel much more confident in my own judgement.

Lesson #8: Sometimes you have to cut your losses and cut your hair

Lesson #9: At some point, kids have to learn a lesson the hard way. And Moms. And foster Moms.

As I sat in that hair salon with the Spanish language flying all around me, I was so very grateful and humbled. Simply by asking Heavenly’s Mom where we could go to cut her hair, we formed a bond. She sat and talked to me for the entire morning, and I feel like that was the moment that a relationship was built.

Lesson #10: Learning another culture takes work and is humbling 

When the deed was done, we all looked at it and clucked over how it could be fixed so that it didn’t look like it was choppy. All the Moms in the room gave Heavenly a lecture and then gently turned to me and gave me a lecture on how to care for it. I learned so much on that day. I cried many tears and apologized over and over again. I listened to outside voices that were blaming me and reprimanding me, but at the end of the day I needed to remind myself of this one final lesson:

Lesson #11: Preserving culture is VERY important, but I sometimes I will fail and fall, and that is ok, too. 

**I wrestled for a long time about whether to not I should write this in a blog post about this. I do not share this story to place blame or shame anyone whatsoever. I know that you can often get a distorted view of our family when all you can see of us is through the lens of a computer screen. Please know that we ALL make mistakes and that we are learning and growing through them. My hope with this blog post is that someone else out there will feel less discouraged when they hear I have made the same mistakes, and that maybe someone else out there can avoid making the same mistakes that I did through the lessons learned!