Reuben's dreadlocks

In my opinion Reuben has gorgeous hair, he loves it long and it makes him instantly recognisable.

We have had a bit of a problem lately though as he doesn't like to have it brushed, I used to put a lot of conditioner on it once a week and brush it in the bath but he has now refused to be subjected to this! The result of course has been a lot of knotted hair at the back. After much discussing the issue, absolute non concern on his part and much concern on mine (dirty hair, nits we might not be able to get rid of, it looks a mess and he might be teased, etc etc) he seemed happy to consider dreadlocks. I have never had them myself so off I went to research dread maintanance (with much help from my friend H) and they seemed harder to look after than regular hair. I wanted to avoid using products at this stage so I just separated the locks in the morning, he was ok with this! It still looked a horrible mess... As you can see below all that happened is that the tangles came together in long tangles and it looked nothing like dreads anyway.

A mess of matted locks

I even started to question my motives, he doesn't care why do I? NIts? They've never had them. Am I bothered about what people think? To an extent yes I am... but that's my problem, and I just like the boys to look nice. What does nice mean? According to what culture and to whose ideas? Do I have a cool hippie skater/surfer child look in mind? Oh dear, yes I think I do! So is there any way we can come to a good solution? I found it this morning while he was in the bath, he is still adamant that he wants it long and not brushed (he has two long baths a day so I'm not concerned with cleanliness) so I will still continue to separate the locks in the morning and if it gets too matted I will do what I did today: I took the scissors to it! Not to cut it but to separate the locks even further so he doesn't get the matted messy look, just lots of small thin locks. I think we are both ok with it now. Most people probably think this is madness, just hold him still and brush the damn hair! But I feel very respectful of his wishes, after all it is his head!

Our "good solution": lots of smaller locks