Choosing the Right Oils for Your Child's Hair Type

Best Oils for your Child’s Hair Type

Finding the best oil for your child’s hair will involve a bit of a stabbing in the dark for most caregivers.  Especially if you are raising them from infancy on up, their curly hair texture is likely to change a lot in their first few years of life, and then again upon reaching puberty. 

If you, yourself are a curly headed person, particularly if your child is your hair twin, or has an older sibling with identical hair whose perfect regime you have established, you will have a head start in the game. 

If you are anything like the rest of us, you just have to experiment until you hit your bingo. (When I first tried my type 4 regimen on Jubilee’s type 3 head of hair – it laughed at me for weeks J ) 

Hopefully the categories below will shorten your search, or give you courage to try a new oil if you already have an idea of what works best for your family of curlies.  When experimenting with new products, particularly leave-in products, it also helps to know what oils your child’s hair loves in order to have a better chance of getting good hair chemistry with that blind date in a bottle.

Type 2’s

These loosely curled and or wavy heads of hair require lighter oils for any kind of leave in or styling application.  I would only recommend the wetter oils for pre-poos or hot oil treatments, for which purpose  the wetter oils are ideal, particularly if herbs or essential oils are required or desired.

Macadamia, jojoba, argan, sunflower, vegetable squalene, camelia and watermelon seed oil seem made just for your boo’s hair.

Type 3’s

In my experience, most Type 3’s, who do not wash daily, benefit from a combination of wet and dry oils.  Basically wet oils (and even butters) for pre-pooing, oil rinsing or first day sealing, then drier oils for touch-ups between wash days.

The wet oils most beloved by type 3’s are coconut, olive, castor and avocado.  The finishing oils that I have found to be best for this hair type are passion fruit (maracuja), grapeseed, jojoba and argan.  Butters on wash days or for protective styling are also popular.

Type 4’s

Your type 4 child’s hair loves oil.  The wetter the better, and more of it than you initially think is wise, is most likely appropriate.  The more frequently you wash (say you have a boy whose hair you keep super short) – you could probably get away with daily application of a heavy oil.  For longer hair, in protective styles you will need to use a lighter touch in between wash days for daily touch ups, but if going longer than 4 days, you may need to touch up with a heavier oil every few days or so.

Type 4 hair adores castor, olive, coconut, avocado, hemp, palm, apricot kernel and grapeseed oils.  Although butters and Type 4 hair are BFF’s, I would still limit their use to wash days and for initial process of protective styling and touch up with lighter oils like jojoba, argan and grapeseed on the ends or whole head as needed.