If you give us a little more description of your problem ,we can addess it..and even work on a solution.
For example:
What would you like your hair to do? dream hairdo?
what can it do?(is it long or short,etc)
what is it doing right now that you hate?
Example:I have sidestepped my need to have relatively 'normal' hair day to day by getting into making "freak" wigs(I am working on a blue/green/black dread & braid wig these days and have a white/pink/light blue/lavender one on the drawing board..pictures are forthcoming).

So ,where there's a will ,there's a way....

Maybe dreads are approached differently where I come from?

Mine were dreaded by back-combing with a very fine toothed comb once this was done the dreads looked fluffy and were about 1/4 the length of my original hair.

Then the dread was 'sealed' for lack of a better word with dread clay. Dread clay is a mixture of marine clay, yellow box beeswax, tea-tree oil and a number of other essential oils. Once the clay went in that was that. It is simply impossible to comb them out. Especially if you repeat the claying process every six months or so which I do.

I would love to see images of different hair styles

Well, there was a link a page or so back to a site about dreads where they told you a couple of differant ways to make your dreads, back combings being the most recommended way. The site also suggested a couple differant dread waxes instead of clays. For taking the dread back down, it said to either SLOWLY comb them out using shampoo and conditioner to losen the dreads as you comb it out. still suppose to take about twice the time it took you to put the dreads up if they are about the same size that they started at.

Perhaps some synthetic dread falls?

http://www.headrazor.com

Hello hello, finally found this board (after rudely invading another one, still feel bad about that so a final sorry to all involved), anyway I've got a bit of a problem. I'm growing my hair out but it's naturally really curly and I would prefer to have a straight down look (like over my right eye or something), by the way I'm a guy. Right now my hair is about 1 and 3/4 inches long, so any advice would be appreciated, even some tips for curly styles would be great. I've already got some gel, but right now my style can only be described as something much like wolverine from the X-Men movie.

I'm just really wanting a new look before it grows out all the way, oh and if it makes a difference my hair is a dark brown (soon to be black with blue highlights). As always your opinions are valuable to me and a big thanks in advance for the future advice!

Well, I know that really curly hair can be a bitch to get a cool style with, so mabey you'll get lucky and the dying process might straighten out a bit for you.

On dreadlocks- I had them until early February of this year, when i was badly infested with lice due to children... We started combing them out, and got about an inch combed out when the amount of damage to my scalp was fully realised, so instead of combing the dreads out and risking further damage, the whole lot was chopped off. (which was possibly the better option in the end as it removed ALL my split ends )

I know there are home-remedies for nits, but none of these (cayenne pepper solutions, methylated spirits, etc) sounded particularly attractive when i had large parts of my scalp raw.

So a word of warning before getting dreads- Make sure you don't live in an area where headlice are pandemic, because removing headlice from dreadlocks is difficult at best.

Well, this'll probably sound somewhat disgusting to straight-locked board members, but I find that if I put some kind of hair serum in my (very thick and curly hair) before it's dry, and then comb that out, and then wait, by the second or third day my hair is totally manageable, and will even go straight with just a bit of extra water on it. (Yes, wearing a showercap is sort of annoying, but not nearly as annoying as what my hair does otherwise). Not that that helps for the first day, particularly, but it makes me feel hipper 2 out of every 3 days, which is a start.

Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to try that out, oh by the way what kind of serum do you use?

I can't wait to grow it out so it goes straight, and I definitely want to do some coloring. My hair has looked the same way for too long.

try dreads, use hair wax

you may possibly want to first tie parts of your hair with hair elastics to get good sectioned out dreads, then take the hair elastics out one by one, apply the hair wax and sort of rub your hair section for like 10-20 minutes as if you're trying to start a fire with a stick and rocks, like put your hair between your two hands and twist it back and fourth sorta..It will likely take about an hour for each piece to get a good look to it. It WILL stay together well with the 10-20 minute twisting, but it won't look the greatest, so after you get them all set, start twisting each of them for another 50-60 minutes each, and with hair wax you can wash+comb it out.I washed and combed mine out, it took a bit, but i just put my hair in a sink of like extremely hot water and got a brush and brushed them out, they came out but my hair was sort of damaged, i kept it long for about a month but then chopped it off

hope this helped some

There's a good one by Aveda, though I don't remember what it's called. I've used the frizz serum by John Frieda and it's all right. Also all right is Paul Mitchell's Straight Works. My stylist, who is awesome, also recommended just using some olive oil (!) which works but smells kind of odd. Whatever you use, use a quarter-sized amount to start and make sure to work it into the roots/scalp area.

Wow Merewena, you came through for me a lot! Thanks! I got some pommade from aveda today and that has worked rather well, I also combed the shampoo out of my hair downwards and that seems to have done a bit to help it. The ends of my hair are still curling though so I'm gonna try the olive oil next (even if I do smell strange), overall I've had great success now I just have to wait for it to grow out!

Oh, and by the way if there's anything I can do to repay you Merewena, I'd be more than happy to help.

Hey, glad I could be of help. Of course, if I ever think of a favor I need.... hmmmmm....

I don't know if you will be interested, but if you are really bored, you can try a hair that you can temporarily put in...like visit Ragdolly to check it out