When you are born with curly hair but your family has straight hair it is difficult to manage because nobody knows what to do with it. I had that exact problem growing up. I have 3b, medium length. I had no one to teach me how to manage my hair so it never looked right and I hated it. Flash forward to now and I have big, bouncy curls. One thing that all curly girls need is a wash routine. There are different ways that curly hair people wash their hair and I will lay out a few plus some tips and tricks to get you started on your natural hair journey.
No Heat
First things first if you want to start rocking your natural hair you need to cut out heat. Straightening, curling, or blow-drying your hair kills your hair and destroys your curl pattern. I know when you are trying to transition your hair to wearing it natural and down all the time it can get tough and sometimes you just want to define one curl with your wand but resist that urge because it is doing more damage than a defined curl is worth. You also should avoid brushing your hair especially when it's dry. Instead you should wet it and put conditioner in it and use a wide tooth comb or your fingers. Brushing it causes frizz and breakage.
Wash Routine
Washing your curly hair is difficult because you don't want to damage your hair or dry it out. A way to prevent that is co-washing, short for conditioner washing. This is when you wash your hair with conditioner. Using conditioner instead of a shampoo is better and less drying for curly hair. Co-washing consists of putting a lot of conditioner on your hand and rubbing and massaging it into your scalp. Make sure you spend time working it into your scalp this is what gets rid of the dirt and buildup on your scalp. This is a great time to detangle your hair preferably just by finger combing from the ends to the roots but if you have to, you should use a wide tooth comb. When putting together a routine for hair washing you can include a clarifying day. This would be the day you use shampoo or another cleansing agent. A lot of people do it once a month or a little over once a month. When you use shampoo you should only put it on your scalp and not scrunch your hair up with shampoo or work it into your hair. Shampoo can damage your ends because of how drying it is. When your hair is wet it is at one of its weakest forms so scrunching or twisting your hair is really bad for it. After you've washed your hair if you can you should try a deep conditioning hair mask. I like to apply the mask in the shower, don't put the mask on your scalp just your hair, do the rest of my shower stuff then just kind of stand there with the water off till it's time to rinse the mask out. After your shower if you want to get rid of the extra water that is dripping off of your hair use a micro fiber towel or cotton t-shirt not a normal towel because they cause breakage and frizz. Next add your leave in conditioner, not on your scalp only on hair, then you can either air dry, pat dry with microfiber towel or t-shirt or you can diffuse on cool.
Learning what is right for your hair is a personal journey because everybody's hair is different. The products that work in my hair might not work in yours and vise versa but asking around is a start. Also if you want to find out your hair type there is a quiz on naturallycurly.com.
