Beyond FASHION: Sunflower Mom’s Take on Just For Me Hair Care for Kids
A recent visitor invited me to check out the blog of Sunflower Mom (aka Kim from the Dallas-Fort Worth area), who is also a teacher and a parent to two children of mixed-race heritage. Kim’s beautiful daughter, Brenna, is a regular on Barney and is pictured on the package of a new product from Just For Me, a line of hair care products for multi-ethnic children. For those of use with very little experience with hair that’s anything other than poker straight, this site is an educational resource. I learned a bit just from skimming the section on “hair myths.” The products look intriguing, and Kim swears by the texture softener made from sunflower oil that’s packaged with the relaxer for children aged five and older.Check out her blog to see what else Kim has to say about raising a mixed-race family. Her current post (“Trying to Fit In”) about her family’s first visit to a new school illustrates clearly what some children of mixed-race heritage deal with on a regular basis. It also illustrates how such issues often catch us parents by surprise…and then send us off to touch base with others who’ve been there, and understand.
posted by Sustenance Scout at 1:08 PM
9 Comments:
Thanks for following my advice and visiting the site. It's very interesting. And to think that this market really hasn't been addressed in this manner before. Moving... did you check the link to the folks called Mavin? That's really interesting too.
Hi, Elle, Mavin's been highlighted on BEYOND Understanding a number of times. It's one of my favorite resources! K.
Why treat "Sunflower mom" like it's a real blog?
It is simply a promotional tool for a product.
Good question, Anon. It's an active blog that promotes a product of interest to people (or parents of children) of mixed-race heritage. And it includes anecdotes about life in an interracial family that readers of BEYOND Understanding may find insightful.
As a biracial person, I find the "sunflower mom" blog horribly offensive. She doesn't know how to care for her biracial daughter's hair, so rather than learn how, she slaps a chemical into it to make it more like white folks' hair? That's not how you go about teaching self-love to a biracial child.
I thought trying to care for her daughter's hair was what she was doing. She'd tried some very poor options and found one that worked, that allowed her daughter to comb her own hair out, and that gave her daughter the option of wearing her hair straight without permanently changing her daughter's hair. I'm not sure giving her daughter choices is such a bad thing to do.
Yes, she's trying to care for her daughter's hair by MAKING IT MORE LIKE WHITE PEOPLE'S HAIR instead of TAKING CARE OF THE HAIR HER DAUGHTER ALREADY HAS. Is there really a reason to put something on a small child's scalp that you cannot apply without plastic gloves? Do you think that a child's scalp is so much stronger than an adult's hands?
She hasn't found anything that works? Well, she needs to keep trying.
Again, I am biracial. Y'all are going on about "how to take care of biracial kids and their special hair" but you don't want to hear from an actual biracial person who was raised by a white mother - a white mother that did NOT teach me that my hair was bad the way it is?
There are ways to take care of different types of biracial hair without resorting to chemicals. There are ways this child can "comb her own hair" - she's biracial, not disabled.
I totally agree with Anonymous who said that there are other ways of combin a biracial childs hair.
I had left a comment on the sunflower site. A mom wanted to know what to do with her daughters hair, i commented that if she doesnt want to put a chemical in her daughters hair she should try twisting her daughters hair when wet. And now i see that the comment was added, i guess because my comment wasnt promoting using chemicals.
We're looking for suggestions on how to take care of biracial hair for kids and would appreciate and suggestions that take a natural approach. Thanks!
http://hilltownfamilies.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/laplante/
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