My kids are 10 and 12. Both have long hair, and although they wash it every day, their hair still looks oily by mid-day. (They shower at night, so it’s not immediate, but you can definitely tell by the time they come home from school the following day.)
I’ve used many of the inexpensive brands and of course would like to stay with something cheaper. I’ve also used more-expensive types–Biolage, Bath&BodyWorks, a few others. Even the shampoos for oily hair don’t seem to make much of a difference.
I know part of the problem with the Weeping Princess is the way she washes her hair–I think she’s washing just the “hang-down” part and not the scalp. Tonight when she showers I’m going to have her wear a bathing suit so I can give her yet another tutorial.
Anyway…what works for you? Thanks!
karol
One thing: try having them not wash it every day. I have long hair and wash it two or three times a week, unless I get unusually sweaty or dirty. Washing too much kicks the oil glands into overdrive. And yes, I concentrate on the scalp.
Do they brush their hair? That might sound like an idiotic question, but if they have curly hair, it might not occur to them.
Either way, I think regular brushing would be good. You should make sure they’re brushing from the scalp to the ends, to keep the scalp healthy and distribute the natural oils all along the hair shaft.
As far as shampoos, I’ve been really happy with good ol’ Suave. Pretty much any formula. Not a 2-in-1 shampoo conditioner, though. This is just my opinion/experience, but I think plain shampoo every time & a ‘daily’ conditioner every other time is good.
The conditioner should be applied from around mid-way down the hair to the ends, not all over.
I’m totally making this up on the spot. So good luck!
Definitely sound to me like less frequent washing might be the way to go. My hair is somewhat oily, and seems to do best when I wash it every other day. Making sure they are washing the scalp is also an excellent idea.
Try the every other day thing for at least a week before you decide whether it’s working. It can take a little while for the hair to “reset” and reach an equilibrium with oiliness.
They do brush their hair at least in the morning and at night. They have long straight hair–although Dad is Asian-American, they definitely inherited my straight locks.
It’s hard to know if they’re washing well or not–although I checked WP’s when she came out of the shower and it smelled clean, at least.
I’m dubious about having them not wash it–on rare occasions when they go without a shower, their hair is awful. I can go for a few days without washing, but theirs seems more oily than mine.
Added: also pretty much do not condition, although sometimes I have my daughter condition just the ends of hers.
The thing is if they don’t wash it as often, it won’t look so awful so fast. I can go four days, easy, before it starts needing a wash. (An ancient Girl Scout handbook I downloaded recently recommended shampooing at least every two weeks! And I doubt everybody in the 20s had horrid greasy hair. Though I would not want to go that long, like, ever.) But until it adjusts, yeah, it’s not going to look great. I’ve never been a daily hair-washer at any length so am not the one to ask how long that might take.
I’ve found that Dr. Bronner’s leaves my hair dryer than anything else I’ve tried, not that I’ve specifically looked for that purpose.
If my hair starts getting too oily I wash it every other day with shampoo then on the other days I get it wet and use conditioner alone then rinse it out. This spreads the natural oils through the hair but doesn’t strip the scalp, it gets the hair used to less frequent shampoos without the icky break in period. After a couple of weeks my scalp is not oily at all. One other thing to try is to final rinse with as cool water as they can stand.
Make sure the hairbrushes are natural bristle, they distribute oil better.
I use Mane’N’Tail shampoo and conditioner. I buy it in the BIG bottles, the ones intended for horses, and I buy it at a farm supply store. If you think the big bottle is too big for them to handle, then get a cheap small plastic bottle, and decant the shampoo into it. It’s cheap and it cleans well and it rinses well. Before that, I used Prell.
Every now and then, I use Neutrogena’s T/Sal shampoo, to control dandruff and itching. I’d say that out of every week, I use the Mane’N’Tail about five days, and the T/Sal the other two days.
Morning showers help get rid of bed-head, and ensure that the only thing coming into contact with their oily hair is the pillow on their bed or family members they encounter in the early morning. If your daughter is self-conscious because her hair starts to look like crap after lunch every day, recommend a switch to morning showers, instead.
If they can train their hair to being used to being washed 2 or 3 times a week, that would be better. But it takes a few weeks of really oily hair until the scalp learns to compensate (yes, it will look worse before it gets better).
Cheap shampoos containing SLS (sodium laureth/laurel sulfate)–which is pretty much all of the ones you can buy for under 5 bucks a bottle–are also harsher and strip out more natural oil, which causes the scalp to produce more oil to compensate. Sulfate-free shampoos aren’t as harsh, but are more expensive.
Touching the hair throughout the day makes it oilier, as well. This is something you have no control over, but if you tell your kids to style their hair in the morning and then never touch it again throughout the day, maybe that will sink in.
My hair was like that when I was a teenager. Then I quit washing it as often and it quit being oily every day.
Really, washing daily strips off the natural oils, so the oil glands go into overtime production.
It does take time to reverse the process, though, and your hair can get ucky until you do.
I’d recommend starting with a half-day extension. Wash hair one evening as usual. Then skip the nightly shampoo the next night and wash it in the morning instead. Don’t wash it that evening, wait until the next night. After a few rounds of this, you’ll notice that it’s taking longer for their hair to get oily. At that point, step the washings back to once every other day and wait again for the scalp to re-adjust. Then every three days, and so on.
You can get it up to several weeks between washings if you want (I did one time, just to see if I could), but really, washing once or twice a week is what I’d recommend. Once weekly should be plenty unless they’re doing something to get sweaty or dirty.
You can also “wash” your hair with conditioner, which pulls off dirt and excess oil without stripping it too much. That can help extend time between washes. I usually condition mine a couple times a week after workouts, and wash weekly.
Make sure they’re only washing the scalp part and not using too much shampoo. Just let the suds rinse through the rest of the hair and that’s plenty. And then condition the long part and skip (or use only very light) conditioner on the scalp area. I recommend changing out conditioners occasionally - I’ve always had trouble with conditioner buildup, but swapping them out regularly seems to help.
I’ve seen recommendations for baby shampoo as the gentlest, but I haven’t tried that. I have a salon shampoo that I’ve been using for years because it works well for me. It is fairly pricey, but since I only need a dollop once a week, it lasts quite a while. And my hair definitely looks/feels better than when I use cheap shampoo.
ETA: Oh yeah, the touching. Do they by chance run their hands up over their face and back through their hair? I do that, and my hair does get greasy around my face, where I’m rubbing face oil onto it.
Do this! When I was a child, I went through a phase where I hated to get water in my face, so I wouldn’t shampoo my scalp. Of course my hair looked awful, and of course I told my mother that, “Yes, I HAD washed my hair thankyouverymuch – here, you can smell it as proof!” and she had to explain to me that the scalp is the dirty part that needs cleaning most of all, not just the length.
Over Christmas break I’ll do the gradual-introduction thing with less frequent washing and see if that helps. They don’t seem to mess with their hair a lot, aside from WP swinging hers to look “flirty.” (Looking flirty is apparently quite the thing in her grade.)
Unfortunately, neither of them really care how it looks either. Eventually they’ll start to care, and then THEY can worry about this stuff. 
I’ve found that a lot of my oily-ness went away after I switched to a sulfate-free shampoo. I think that sulfates are particularly hard on hair/scalp and make the scalp generate more oil to compensate.
Sulfate-free, and less frequent washings helped me get rid of my “oily” hair.
I had this problem at their age. I don’t know if I was washing my hair properly at the time (probably not), but I know that the color and length were contributing factors. My dirty-blonde (literally and figuratively speaking) with sun highlights tended to look greasier than it was. A different hair style helped it look not quite as greasy as it was.
Morning showers might help the non-greasiness last longer, but having one more thing to do in the morning with two pre-teens might not be a feasible solution.
I can’t imagine going without washing my hair every day, so the other replies might be the best way to go with this option.
One alternative to washing to check on:
Do they have very fine (thin) hair strands? Not how much hair they have, but the thickness of the individual strands. If it is extremely fine, then it will weigh down and look greasy/lank because of the humidity and crap in the air attaching to it.
In other words, if their hair is fine, it may not be oily, just atmospheric dirt that isn’t as noticeable to people with more robust hair strands.
Sadly, the only real fix for this is to either wear your hair in an updo, keep it braided, or cut it short so that it’s own weight isn’t making things worse.
Google "going no poo" for stories and advice on breaking the cycle of shampooing-oily hair. it can take up to six weeks or longer, and most people give in before that. I know I did.
I wash my toddler son ‘s hair about once every eight weeks with shampoo, and about once every week/two weeks with water, and he gets compliments on his hair often. He just hates getting shampoo or water in his eyes. Another benefit of breaking the shamppo habit is that my sons’ hair is less likely to attract lice. Lice especially like daily shampooed hair.
My husband went no poo two months ago, too. He washes his hair every day under the shower, but doesn’t use shampoo anymore. His hair is just as clean and actually looks better.
If they truly do have greasy hair andare already actually scrubbing and massaging heirnscalps for a good minute in the shower, then a clarifying shampoo is what you need. Neutrogena Clean is great but a little pricey, so use it in rotations with VO5 Kiwi Lime.
If they do wash at night, be sure they are brushing it well in the AM.