When I first wrote about our curly girl, she was only a toddler and her first wisps of hair were just coming in. She’d remained a bald baby until she was 2, and then all of a sudden, she didn’t have just hair but a mass of curly hair that formed corkscrews around her head, not unlike a porcupine on its way home from a perm.

We are well past that stage now, and now have actual hair to deal with. We’re solidly in the Shirley Temple years. Her hair curls into insanely soft ringlets, hard pressed to grow past her little shoulders. It seems for every inch her hair grows, it just gets zoomed right up into a curl.

We’ve had to adjust her hair routine slightly, but with curly hair, the slight changes are the most important.

1. We still use It’s a Curl Shampoo and Conditioner. (We tried to cheap out and just use my hair products once her hair was longer. It was a no-go.)

2. We still use a spray bottle of most parts water, tiny part conditioner, to spray her hair every morning, comb it out, and then encourage the curls to form, as in my original post.

3. We had to upgrade combs from her sweet little baby comb into a big girl comb, to deal with all the hair. The key remains: NO BRUSHES EVER ONLY COMBS, and only touch or comb it when it’s wet. Once it’s dry, leave it alone

4. The most critical component, though, has been getting her Deva haircuts. Now, for the uninitiated (re: if you yourself don’t have curly hair), you maybe haven’t heard of Devachan or Deva cuts. Welcome to your new life as a parent of a curly haired kid.

Devachon is a salon/lifestyle/belief system in New York that revolutionized curly hair cuts. Since curly hair looks so different dry than wet, the stylists trim hair while it’s dry. Also, since curly hair doesn’t just grow straight across but curls into ringlets and waves, each curl is cut individually. No, for real. Pull the curl out, snip, move onto the next curl.

The cut gives curls definition and distinction, so you can move on from the “oh my God, my child’s hair is always a tangly mess/I’m such a failure as a parent of a girl/I’ve failed being a girl myself/why does every other kid not look like an utter mess most of the time” to a kid with still messy but also beautiful curly hair.

In San Francisco, the place to go for a curly girl haircut is MaduSalon (request a curly haircut when you call for an appointment). If your kid has curly hair, seriously go here. (I’m not sure what they charge for cutting kid’s hair. I go here as well, so I bring Bean in with me, and my stylist cuts her hair for free.)

If you don’t live in San Francisco, the Devachan website offers a trained stylist search based on zip code. Also check out the Naturally Curly website for trained stylists in your city.

5. I also have to “style” her hair now — pigtails, hairband, ponytail, clip. I’m not great at it (understatement), but I do make sure her hair is dry before I style it into place. Styling curly hair when wet can lead to breakage — curly hair is very delicate. And I also don’t want her ringlets to lose their definition due to days of straightening when wet. Granted, she looks like a little poofball with her curly hair leading to a pony, but it’s the cutest little poofball.

At some point, every curly haired kid is going to wish for straight hair. Bean’s hair is her most remarked-upon feature, but sometimes, she tries to press it down and smooth it out so that it can be straight (like her dad and most of her friends and cousins). Part of being a parent to a curly haired kid is to celebrate their beautiful messy heads, let them know that their hair is perfect just as it is, while doing as much as you can to maintain its health.