If you have a daughter between the ages of two and nine, chances are you have a doll in your house. Chances are just as great, that one of those dolls is a Disney Rapunzel doll from their movie Tangled. Love the movie, but the doll has at least two feet of hair (expected I suppose.). Inevitably, the hair ends up being in a huge mass of knots. And of course, this upsets my daughter because she can’t de-tangle the hair herself. It also makes me grumpy, because well, it looks gross. In addition to this Rapunzel doll, we also have a few American Girl dolls that were having bad hair weeks. Even Barbie dolls are not immune to the tangled hair debacle. What is a mom and her little girl to do?

First and foremost, get a doll brush. They are easy to find, inexpensive, and can really help this process. I also recommend hitting up your travel section at the grocery store and buying a small squirt bottle or two. We are going to make dolly hairspray. I wanted it to be something I could let my daughter use without fear of her accidentally destroying the house or poisoning the dog. Therefore all of our sprays are roughly ninety percent water.

My first concoction was a mix of actual hair detangler mixed with water. This mixture works really well, but it can take a ton of it to get the job done.  My second mixture was of water and fabric softener. With both mixtures you want maybe a tablespoon of softener (or detangler) mixed with the rest of the spray bottle with water.

I like the fabric softener the best because it only took a few squirts to get the job done. And it smelled good. With the American Girl dolls, I always do my best with plain water before going to our hairspray route. They are such good quality that they usually don’t need much, but when they do, you and your daughter now have an arsenal of tricks up your sleeves.

-Stephanie Wright