Ignore them. They are not for us. Never ever pile your hair on top of your head and grind the shampoo in. All it will do is matt your curls. They tangle enough as it is. Don’t give them a reason to mat.

Let the water run over your hair, keeping your hair smooth and calm. Squeeze the water in to make sure it is saturated before applying shampoo.

When shampooing, apply the shampoo to your fingertips and insert them under your hair. Rub the shampoo onto your scalp only. It is your scalp that needs the washing. Your ends will get cleansed from the run off of the shampoo, plus the rinsing step following.

When your scalp is lathered, rinse thoroughly, opening sections for the water to run through. Do not involve your ends in this procedure. This is between the scalp and the shampoo only.

Only shampoo once!

Here are a few shampoos I recommend: Shampoos

Once all the shampoo has been rinsed from your hair, there is this neat trick you can do to get the affect of shampooing twice, without drying out your hair. You can use a cheap conditioner like a shampoo. This will help wash out any remaining particles from your hair, cleanse the ends, yet it will condition instead of stripping your hair. Since our hair is so curly, if it gets too dry, things cling to it. Rinsing with conditioner makes it slippery, so it will rinse easier.

The best kind of conditioner for rinsing out your hair is a lighter all-purpose one, preferably one that is kind of cheap. It isn’t that important what kind you choose here, since you will be rinsing it out again. Try not to get one that says volumizing, or one for oily hair.

Apply a generous handful of conditioner to your scalp. Squeeze it down to the ends. You can insert your fingers under your hair to rub your scalp if you feel it needs more cleansing. Once it is rubbed into your scalp and squeezed through your ends, rinse it out as you would do the shampoo, always keeping your ends hanging loose. The conditioner will do what the shampoo would have done, which is to grab dirt and hold onto it while it is rinsed away with the dirt. It just does it much better.

Here are some rinsing conditioners I recommend: Rinsing Conditioners

Once you have gently rinsed all the conditioner out of your hair, it is time for a very very crucial step in taking care of your curls. This is important. It is this step that will protect you from humidity and wind. It will help weigh down your curls and make them predictable. Combined with the sectioning step (it comes after the combing section), it will make all the difference in the world with your curls.

Loosely divide your hair in half.

Take a big handful of conditioner. Ignore what the bottle recommends. The recommendations are for wimpy hair. Your hair is not wimpy. Take the big handful of conditioner and squeeze it into one half of your hair. Not so much on the scalp, but concentrate on the rest of your hair.

Make sure you feel it gooing thickly through all your hair. When you squeeze a section of hair, you should feel the conditioner gushing out. If there is a matted spot, poke it through with your fingers.

When you finish squeezing conditioner through one side, take another palmful of conditioner. Now squish it through the other side of your hair. Make sure the other half of your hair is saturated as well.

Here is a good sampling of combing/leaving in conditioners I recommend: Combing Conditioners

The conditioner staying in your hair is the key to having conditioned, manageable curls. This is one of the two most important tricks to having glossy, behaving curls.

Don't worry if it seems like too much. The excess will come out when you comb your hair in the next step.

As a heads-up, your hair will foam like it's rabid as you comb it. This is normal. By the time you finish combing and smoothing, the conditioner will have vanished. Take a section of your hair to be combed. Your hair needs to be soaking wet with water and conditioner when you comb for this to work. Remember all the rules. When pulling apart your hair, gently hold the ends, and slide one section out of the other. This should be somewhat easy to do because you have all that conditioner in your hair.

When you’ve isolated a section, pin back the rest of your hair. Start at the end of the section and comb out the tangles. Then move up to the next tangled spot in that section and comb it gently out of your hair. Then move up to the next tangle, until they are all taken out of that section.

To keep from tugging on your (or your child’s very curly hair), it is important how you hold the hair. When you hold a section as you comb it, pinch it between your scalp and where you are combing it. You may have to pinch tightly, but this blocks the pain of tugging reaching the scalp. It’s easiest to do this between your thumb.

These pictures show the combed part versus the ends that still need to have the final tangle combed out of it. Tangles are moved of the rest of the hair to the ends one by one. The last step is to comb the final tangle down and out the ends of your hair.

When the section has been combed, you may notice that your hair will start to section itself into curls. You can see my hair dividing itself into two curls in the larger picture where I’m combing a small section with the blue Denman brush.

Your hair wants to clump. Curly hair wants to curl together with like curls. If you work with the natural tendency of your hair, you will make both you and your hair happy. By sectioning your hair, you reinforce your natural texture. Enhancing the curls in the way they want to be will keep it clumped together, and not frizz. And the conditioner in it will help keep it together without being crunchy.

Divide your section into however many curls it wants to be divided into. Wavier hair clumps in bigger sections. Tighter curls need much much smaller sections. If you have a section and it separates into more curls, you need to honor what your curls want, and section it until it is one solid unit. This may be different sizes on different parts of your head. For me, the back and by my ears can take pretty big clumps, while at the crown and back of my head need lots and lots of smaller sections, about 1/5 the size of other parts of my head.

Once you have separated a curl, you need to smooth it to reinforce the curl. All you need to do is run your hand down it. This sets your curl by smoothing all the hairs together to act as a unit.

Smooth all the individual curls in the section, then pin them out of the way and move onto the next section.

If you usually brush or comb your hair every night, when you switch to using this technique, you will only brush it after washing and conditioning. Since you are brushing less often, but you are loosing the same amount of hair, there will be more hair left in your brush. You are shedding the same amount of hair, you will just be seeing it all at once, instead of a little at a time.

Once you have combed, sectioned, and smoothed all your hair, it is time to let it dry.

Just let it be.

Never brush or comb dry hair or drying hair. You will turn a curl into a cloud instantly (see rules for picture of what happens to to dry curls after combing).

At night simply put your hair in a bun or two, or a braid or two, depending on the length. For the braid, you can braid to near the ends, then twist it the rest of the way down to prevent tangles. (Since my ends are so curly, they tangle up when I try to undo the ends of a braid. They respond better to the twist).

To protect them from tangling further, you can loop and tuck the ends into the rest of the braid.

Until you go to wash it again, your hair will be very easy to take care.

In the morning, all you have to do is unbraid it or unbun it, and smooth a little conditioner and water over your hair. Do not finger comb. Just smooth over it. Use a few passes with water and conditioner for fuzzy parts. Now your hair will be sweetly scented and smooth.

If you style it, it’s pre-divided for you. Just gather your curls in the desired style and style them. No more fighting to rip your hair apart to divide it.

The bottom photo shows the length of my hair now after following these techniques.