First off, I’ve got to pat myself on the back, as I feel like I’ve finally got a hang of French braiding. Gasp – yes, I have a hair blog and I’ve stunk at French braiding (at least in my opinion!) I mean, I could do it, but I never really like how things turned out. But with practice, I’ve gotten better. And as the old adage says – practice makes perfect! I still am not the queen of braiding, but I’ll actually let the girls go out of the house sporting one of my braids now! 🙂 For this one, you’ll need to know how to French braid. I’ll eventually put my video on here, but I don’t have time for that yet!
Anyway, back to the hairdo. This is nothing earth shattering, just something I thought I’d share because chances are some of you out there deal with this problem too (and who knows- w/all the many, many hair blogs out there, this possibly has been done elsewhere!) Bee finally has enough hair to braid, or French braid. BUT – she still has a lot of the little short hairs/baby hairs up front around her face. So trying to French braid towards the front of her hair is a joke for 2 reasons. One being those baby hairs, and secondly, trying to get her to tip her head the way I need her to so I can get a grip on the hair and braid it is just ridiculous. She’s pretty good at holding still for short periods of time, but I still am usually working on a moving target. So the other day I decided to try something else.
I made a side part, and then parted from ear to ear – making 2 little ponytails up front and secured them with rubber bands. Then I did a zig-zag part down the back of the head to divide the rest of the hair in half.
Starting on the left side ponytail I made 4-5 plaits of a regular braid in the little pony tail working towards the back of the head.
Then once I had braided far enough down the ponytail and I was over the hair hanging down in back – that’s when I started adding hair into the regular braid, to start making a French braid.
Continue adding hair, as you would to French braid, and braid until you run out of hair. You could stop at the nape of the neck and leave the rest in ponytails, or I could have flipped the braids up to cute-sify it some more, but I left it as is – 2 basic French braids, just started from a ponytail, into a regular braid, and then into a French braid.
And because she was in a silly mood & her sister wouldn’t let her have her Halloween vampire teeth, she opted for putting a claw clip in her mouth for “scary teeth!”
Anyway, by doing the ponies up front, it helps all those little hairs stay put, she doesn’t have to crank her neck to some weird angle for me, and we still get cute French braids out of the deal!
BRILLIANT! I would have NEVER thought to do this! I was looking on here for beginner french braids and so glad I found this!
Thank you for the idea. I will have to try it on my 3 yr old, who hats having her hair put up.
Thank you. I have a two year old that looks like a woodland creature or sprite with her wild hair. It’s longish, but baby fine and getting a braid in involves a wrestling match. Doing a search for tips on toddler braiding lead me here and I’ll have to try the front pony idea next time for her wispy front hairs that never stay in.
This is similar to what did to my daughter’s hair this moring except it was only one and it was a high half ponytail.I was trying to find out about doing double french braids on a toddler who’s never had a hair so she still all that super fine baby hair.