Afro Kids Protective Styling Basics for Length Retention

By DiscoveringNatural

For the newbie reading this article, a protective style is a hair style where the ends of the hair is protected or tucked away so that it's not manipulated daily, thus, allowing the hair to grow long.

Why do we need to protect the ends of our hair?

The ends of our natural hair is the oldest and weakest part of the hair strands. Being the oldest part, it is also the most fragile and the part where split ends occurs the most frequently. However, when we protect the ends of the hair, we are able to minimize breakage and hair damage and as a result, retain more length.

Protective Style and Hair Growth

Many Naturals often ask the question, "How can I get my hair to grow?" The answer to this question is not how to make your hair grow, but how to retain the length of the hair you currently have. Hair growth is a passive activity which occurs continuously regardless of what we apply to the hair, where as length retention requires an active maintenance of the hair, which will ultimately determine how much of your hair growth will remain on your head and how much of it would fall off.

Types of Protective Styles
To emphasize, a protective style is any hairstyle which protects the ends of our hair, minimize breakage and maximizes hair growth. Examples of such styles are braids, flat twists, cornrows, African threading, bantu knots and buns.



CAUTION! 

No matter what style you choose to do when protective styling your child's hair, PLEASE do not put too much tension on the hair. If while braiding, you notice bumps or a pull on the scalp, simply loosen up so that the excessive tension does not damage the scalp and affect your child's hair growth.

 What are some of your go to protective styles?