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Dragon
April 7th, 2011, 05:56 AM
At what age did you start doing damaging things to your hair?

I was 15 and I started by using those things taht you heat up and wrap in your hair in to make curls. I can’t remember what they are called.

Tiina
April 7th, 2011, 06:03 AM
I was 12 or 13 when I started doing anything to my hair, good and bad. Basically the only thing I did bad was dye it. The good was using conditioner and taking off split ends and damage. It was in worse condition before as my mother didn't know how to take care of it and I didn't care. I never got the hang of doing anything really damaging so my hair has always been in an okay condition. Now I just know more good things I can do to it. And I don't dye anymore.

Merewen
April 7th, 2011, 08:18 AM
My mom was actually pretty knowledgeable about haircare and taught me the basics at a young age, but probably around the time I hit 13, I stopped caring and started to do things like rip a brush through it when wet.

CrisDee
April 7th, 2011, 08:32 AM
I started doing bad things to my hair pretty much as soon as I was old enough to take care of it myself - like age 7 or 8! I wasn't a patient child, so the first "bad thing" was to rip a brush or comb through my hair to satisfy my mom's requirement to do it myself. Kept up that habit for decades. Then as a teenager, I used actual rubber bands for ponytails! :shudder: Then came the advent of heat styling devices - which I plunged into using with abandon. Kept that up for decades as well (but at least I ditched the rubber bands when covered ponytail holders were invented!). The 80's gave way to all sorts of bleaching, perming and AquaNet. Started regular, monthly chemical dying (red) around 1990, when the grays started coming in, with an occasional perm thrown on top of that (none since 1997, though).

Fast forward to 2009, when discovering LHC. My hair was dyed, fried, split and generally used and abused. Its huuuuuge sigh of relief was almost audible! :D

hina87
April 7th, 2011, 08:35 AM
I started doing bad things to my hair starting high school (curling, straightening, rip plastic comb thru wet hair, dyeing etc..) until college. My mom did not know how to maintain good hair health so she did not have any suggestions for me until I started college. (I can't get thru to her but she thinks henna is bad for your hair) After starting college, I realized my mistake and try my best to educate myself abt. hair health from LHC as well as other sources.

Neneka
April 7th, 2011, 08:46 AM
When I was 16 my mother made me to bleach my hair... After that I dyed and bleached it for years. I also washed my hair every morning because it got all stringly and oily so fast and because I had to go to school I also blow dried it every morning.

pepperminttea
April 7th, 2011, 08:46 AM
When I started 'looking after it' myself, really, as a child. It wasn't until my late teens when I did some research into what shampoo ingredients actually were and started playing with my routine that I started to think about it. I'd never thought to question it before then. :shrug:

jesis
April 7th, 2011, 08:53 AM
My mom put highlights in my hair for the first time when I was 9. :shudder:

I started flat-ironing my hair when I was in 7th grade, so I was 12. I hated my curls because everyone would make fun of them. :( I didn't stop until I was 22.

elbow chic
April 7th, 2011, 09:01 AM
I never had a great hair care routine-- I washed it every day with unnecessarily harsh shampoo in totally unnecessary amounts. Piled up the hair in the shower and lathered it to death.

Hardly *ever* used conditioner. No protective styling. Ripped a brush through the inevitable resulting tangles and knots; I could hear it popping!

If I went to the beach, I'd roll around in the sand and salt water for several hours with loose hair. :rolleyes:

Then it would grow about to APL and turn into fuzzy straw. I'd get sick of it and cut it short and start the whole process over.

By the time I was seventeen or so I had started blowdrying on high on a pretty regular basis. But by then I'd given up on trying to grow it out, so the blowdryer wasn't a really a problem. You can do almost anything you want to 13-inch hair. :p

Rennire
April 7th, 2011, 09:04 AM
I stared straightening my hair when I was 16 and I did it everyday until I found LHC!

elbow chic
April 7th, 2011, 09:21 AM
Ha, something else I just remembered: My parents saw this thing on TV that showed that shampoo has pretty much the same active ingredients as dish-soap. (which is probably true.)

So... they decided to quit getting 'ripped off' buying shampoo, and guess what they replaced the shampoo with? Octagon dishwashing liquid!

There for several months if you wanted to wash your hair at my house, the only thing available to use was that gigantic bottle of Octagon. aiiii!

ericthegreat
April 7th, 2011, 09:56 AM
My parents to this day believe that you can catch a cold if you don't blow dry your hair after washing it.:rolleyes: So from the very first time I had significant hair (probably at 3 years old or so), my mother would blow dry my hair after a wash because she was convinced that allowing my wet hair to naturally air-dry would make me sick. This continued all the way up to my teens, when I was allowed to take care of my hair by myself. But by then, I was also convinced that wet hair would lead to a cold, so I would blow dry my own hair every time after I washed it. When I was 17, I bought my first flat iron and for my senior year of high school, I always flat-ironed my then shoulder length hair pin straight every morning because I wanted to look perfect everyday for school. :justy: Thinking back now, I can't believe I didn't burn all my hair off during that year!

Since then, I have gone thro 4 other flat irons, my last two are the much higher quality ceramic ones so they are less damaging than my old irons which were metal. Since joining LHC two years ago, I've limited my heat styling to no more than once a week, and now I let my hair air-dry much more often.

nazzooyzo
April 7th, 2011, 10:03 AM
probably around 13 cos i started dying my hair fairly often

CurlyCreature
April 7th, 2011, 11:07 AM
14, 15, 17..?? Oh gosh! I was waay younger! I'm the family freak with my curly hair and so nobody new how to cope with it. I had my dad telling me to shampoo and repeat or else my curls would get frizzy, and my mum would rip through my wet hair with a brush every morning... ak! I had a frizzy fro on top, with nothing but matts and dread underneath, it was awful! And I accepted it, I just thought thats how curly hair it. It wasn't until recently that I really learned about hair care & curl control, and if was from my black friends - I feel like there is not enough literature & education out there for causation curly girls; you search "curly hair" on google and all you get are results that tell you how to "heat treat" and "curl" straight hair.. thats not what we need!

rosieex3
April 7th, 2011, 11:15 AM
When I was 13, the vicious blonde highlight cycle started. Actually when I was 12..I got some auburn highlights but they looked very pretty and natural. The stylist also did a great job and my hair was still very healthy.

Anyway, once I was 13 I would get blonde highlights bleached into my naturally brown hair. Once my roots would come in, I would get MORE highlights put into my hair. Yes, more highlights over already bleached hair. (why did no stylist ever tell me to simply just get my roots touched up? :mad:) Then I would always leave the salon hating my hair, because it was too blonde for my liking. Then I would dye it dark brown for the colder weather, and bleach highlights in again during the spring/summer. My hair was a WRECK during this time. SO fried looking, and I didn't even care!

Nevvie
April 7th, 2011, 11:57 AM
I've heard horror stories of straight haired parents not knowing how to care for their curly child's hair but I really lucked out. I had dark blonde, medium texture curls as a child so of course my very fine and straight haired brunette mother was in love with it (don't we always want what we don't have?). Since I had her dream hair she took very good care of it and learned as much as she could about how to care for it. Wide toothed hair picks instead of a brush, deep conditioning, hot oil treatments, leave in conditioners, detangling spray, chlorine and sun protectant. Maybe not quite up to LHC standards but not bad for a mother of 5+ who worked full time and had until then only cared for straight to slightly wavy hair.

When I was about 8 or so I started caring for it myself. The pick was too much work so I started using my Dad's nylon brush. I also got lazy and washed with my brother's 2 in 1. Poofy and tangled hair was my 'look' for the next couple years.... My Mom still made me deep condition fairly regularly and would break out the pick and detangler after a shower so it didn't get too badly damaged until I was older. I started dying it blonde at about 12 (my hair was a light/medium brown by this point). Then at about 14 I went through a phase where I changed my hair color every month or two. At 16 I started straightening and by 19 I was using chemical relaxers. Plus still changing my hair color a couple times a year. Yikes! It's a good thing my hair was already dead or I would have killed it.

Kisa
April 7th, 2011, 12:00 PM
I think I started damaging my hair when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I straightened it a little, and brushed it when wet (I did'nt know ANYTHING about hair care or damaging back then). But my biggest damage regime came when I was 14 - I started to dye my hair and used heat on my hair every day. I couldn't go out without straightening my hair first, it was all frizzy because of all the damage. I've always had long, thick hair though, so that was never a problem.

owlathena
April 7th, 2011, 12:13 PM
My mom used to use her left over dye (she had a pixie so there was always plenty left over) in my hair when I was in kindergarten. It was a dark red(I think the color was called "cinnamon"). I remember my grandma getting really mad at her for doing it. But I loved it! I think its one of the reasons I'm so expressive with my hair now. My "bad hair habits" didn't start until 7th grade when my best friend introduced me to flat ironing.

In2wishin
April 7th, 2011, 12:34 PM
I never really had a bad routine, mostly because I never had a routine :p I have always been low maintenence because I don't have the patience to fuss with my hair on a regular basis.

Having said that; starting in HS I would occasionally use a blow dryer and hot rollers or curling iron. I did streaks once when I was 19 (never again) and I started coloring over the grays in my 40's (which isn't necessarily a bad habit, just something I wasnt to stop doing).

lapushka
April 7th, 2011, 12:50 PM
15 here also. Damaging things at least. Cutting it short started way before that, when I was 10/11 and onwards until about age 15, when I -at least- grew it back out some. The real damage started with sun-in, crimping, a perm, later dye. Hey... I guess I didn't start dyeing my hair until I was well past the age of 18... even 20... kind of a revelation...

isshevital
April 7th, 2011, 01:25 PM
I was probably 12 or 13. Up until that point my hair was pretty much stick-straight, so when it started going all wavy and poofy I didn't know how to care for it. My cousin introduced me to a flat-iron and I began the most ridiculous haircare routine for my then-BSL hair. Since my hair was getting oily from hormones and whatnot, I figured I needed to use clarifying shampoo everyday! I think I used to shower at night and then wake up in the morning and spend 45+ minutes flat ironing the whole thing with a cheap flat iron. Surprisingly, my hair was quite shiny and healthy-looking when I look back at pictures from that time.

I also remember when I was maybe 11, and I really wanted to have highlights. My mom went out and bought one of those highlighting kits where you pull your hair through the little holes in the cap :disgust: and I ended up with horrible orange-y highlights. One piece by my face even got highlighted with 2 or 3 inches of unbleached roots because of the way it got pulled through the cap!

sakuranoshin
April 7th, 2011, 01:47 PM
Oh God,WELL...it all started pretty young, pretty much all mah life i abused mah hair, by going out side with wet hair and combing IT right after getting outta the shower .
when i was 10 i used to go throw 2 weeks without combing IT (not even finger combing!!), but i guess mah hair wouldn´t look damaged because i cutted it every 3 months (YES i used to be a chopping hair junky).
Well, a year a go when i was thirteen i decided to grow IT, and also found FLAT IRONS,wich is such a cliché and BAD, i´ve used it for 4 months and soon mah hair would break up in splits and breakage.

MaryRose
April 7th, 2011, 02:21 PM
When I was 12, I started caring for my own hair. I used to wash my hair every night and then rip a brush through my BSL hair to get the tangles out. I didn't like taking care of my hair much and found it to be a hassle. At 14, my hair was cut to a Pixie. I was never allowed to dye it. I never really had damaged hair since my hair was cut short which inadvertantly lead to cutting off the damage before it started. I joined the Navy at 18 which kept my hair at SL for about 4 years. I grew my hair out to BSL in 2005 and then cut it back to Pixie in 2008. Now I am growing it out for good. I found this site just in time to help with the regrowth process. My daughter is learning good care right along with me, she is 10 and always had chin length hair. She has SL+ hair now and wants to grow her hair out to knee length.

ArienEllariel
April 7th, 2011, 02:22 PM
4? I always had a matted mess near my crown and baby fine hair. The mixture plus harsher shampoos as I got older really messed up my hair.

FireBunny
April 7th, 2011, 02:38 PM
I first dyed my hair at the age of 12...I went for "black cherry" and kept that shade for almost 5 years. At 17, I dyed my hair to match the roots, got a short haircut and never looked back. It's taken 7 years, but I finally have 100% virgin hair.

Rocket22
April 7th, 2011, 03:34 PM
I think my coloring started at 13 ish with sun in ughhhh... but I do remember once getting a perm in 4th grade how ever old that is. See I have always messed with my hair. Hopefully now a bizillion years later I have learned my lesson :)

jesis
April 7th, 2011, 07:19 PM
I guess I'm forgetting about the time when I was in Pre-School and my mother had put the top half of my hair up into a pony-tail. I was playing with my scissors and reached back and chopped it off! (mind you I had waist-length hair at this time) She then had to give me a perm to cover up the awful damage I had caused myself. I was 4 years old. :)

ghilliegirl_an
April 7th, 2011, 07:54 PM
I always took great care of my hair up until about 7th grade which was about 14 I think. I went for a trim at a salon and the stylist didn't know what they were doing and cut my classic length hair into a backwards 'U' shape so it all had to be cut off, all the way up to bsl. After that I hated how crazy curly and unmanageable my hair was so I started straightening it on a daily basis. I did that for 3 years and now that I've stopped I feel like I will be cutting off that damage forever.

-Ashley

Anywhere
April 7th, 2011, 07:56 PM
Well, I began brushing it when I was young, but that's because I was teased and seen as unhygienic by my peers if I didn't.

I first bleached my hair when I was 9. Then came straightening, and then dyeing... :rolleyes:

krissykins
April 7th, 2011, 08:03 PM
Started straightening at 13. Did that until age 17. Colored my hair at 14, stopped when I was 15.

lw8666
April 7th, 2011, 08:07 PM
Age 13, I began to blowdry. Age 15 I began straightening! Wish I never started!!!

Maelyssa
April 7th, 2011, 08:11 PM
At 11 I found an old bottle of Sun-In in my mother's room & I just went for it. Well I had orange, dry, frizzy hair the next morning but since it was lighter which was my goal I was thrilled. My mother was not so thrilled.

ouseljay
April 7th, 2011, 08:21 PM
My bad hair habits started with what my mother taught me. My mother's ideas for hair care were (are?) a bit scattered, so I learned a bunch of bad habits along with a couple good ones. The good: Always condition, rinse with cold water (I never did pick that one up, though). Her idea of good hair care is an expensive salon and expensive shampoo and conditioner.

The bad:
- She would rip through my hair with a brush from the time it was long enough to need brushing. And I mean rip, my hair tangled at the drop of a hat when I was little, and she started at the top and yanked. Owie. I thought that was how it was supposed to be done until middle school. My scalp still cringes at the memory.
- She taught me to blow-dry after every wash, which thankfully was only once a week. That I stopped in middle school too, but mostly because I was lazy. ;) (Come to think of it, this may be part of the reason my hair was so straight as a child!)
- She taught me to pile it up on top of my head and scrub to wash it. Yeah, I didn't learn not to do that until last year.

KittyLost
June 2nd, 2011, 10:12 AM
My hair had been washed by piling up on top of my head with a handful of shampoo from the moment I was born until I was 13. I never used conditioner until I was 14. It had also been brushed wet from birth until 2007.

I was 14, my hair had just grown long out of an accidental terrible bob cut when I was 11 and it had grown back curly instead of my previously straight hair. So naturally, due to school and peer pressure and the fact I was very self-conscious and hated having my hair up I blowdried and straightened my hair into oblivion every other day with cheap straighteners.

I started dying my hair at 16 and in that first year I dyed my hair a total of 17times as I was so excited to change my colour. Box dyes, bleaches and veggie dyes.

heatherbelle
June 2nd, 2011, 11:02 AM
I was about 9-ish. I never had a mother figure around to teach me these proper beauty habits, my dad, he was not a hair care taker when I was growin up lol. I usually had pixie cuts shudder:.

reneemichelle
June 2nd, 2011, 11:02 AM
Around 13 my hair went through some hormonal changes and went a lot curlier and I had no idea what to do with it. In the past I committed every hair sin, the main ones being ridiculous amounts of hair dye, bleach, and consistent use of hot tools. Now I like to think I'm old and wise ;)

Friesiangirl
June 2nd, 2011, 11:11 AM
Around ... 5. Gymanstics is rough on hair--lots of hair spray, tight ponies, clips, gels. Then that continued and we never used conditioner because it was such an operation to get me in the bath as it was... yikes I hated water.

Then at 12 I began dying and haven't seen my natural color since.

Hayley

PianoPlaye
June 2nd, 2011, 11:13 AM
My bad habits started at an age too early to confess to.
Many I did not know were damaging until about 2 months ago, when I found this forum. (I was raised as a shorthair - the length
started when I was away at university. The ignorance went right on!)

Dragging brush through wet hair - um, from when I started growing out the default Diana cut I got in my teens.
Not using conditioner - um, only woke up & smelled the coffee late: like around 2 months ago.
Dying - flirted with Sun-In in early teens, but abandoned it due to cost & it apparently not working. Anything else would have triggered the wrath of parents. Later, never got into it as saw schoolmates make a real cob of the hobby.
Tried to put curls in using rags - not fatal but gruesomely ineffective, around my early 20s.
Washing it too often with too harsh a shampoo - only stopped a couple of months back.
Pile up on top of my head and scrub to wash it - only stopped a couple of months back.
Using elastics with metal in - I'm converting my remaining stash. The little knot does nothing for my look but protects my hair a bit.

proo
June 2nd, 2011, 11:16 AM
I'll never forget my mum bringing home the first "blow dryer" - it had a brush attachment to brush through the hair as it was being dried. The first time I used it it actually worked great, made my as yet unharmed hair much smoother and curled under. All downhill after that, tons of products, heat and the feeling that I was missing something crucial about taking care of it.
I think I was about 12.

Angeletti
June 2nd, 2011, 11:20 AM
I was probably 12 or 13 when I started curling my hair with a curling iron every day, then I decided to color my dark hair blonde with one of the box jobs in the store, it was not a pretty sight!

Eva_M
June 2nd, 2011, 11:38 AM
I always hated my curls, especially while being a teenager, so I started straightening almost daily when I was 14-15 with a non-ceramic flat iron; I also started to put some highlights that ended up in a whole dyed head... and not to mention the huge amount of hairspray everytime I did an updo!

Fortunately my habits have changed... ;)

cheetahfast
June 2nd, 2011, 11:52 AM
I was young, probably 10? I used to not brush or comb my hair since I had curly knots (I eventually found a good detangler). Later on around 12 I started to straighten and blow dry my hair daily. During, high school my habits began to change (thankfully). I cringe thinking about all of the heat I must have used.

xoerincolleen
June 2nd, 2011, 11:58 AM
When I was little I was never allowed to go to bed with wet hair- my dad's grandmother used to tell my dad that she was crippled because of an illness she caught from going to bed with wet hair and the window open. My dad still warns me against going to bed with even damp hair :rolleyes: So my mom used to blowdry my hair for me when I was as little as 5 or 6. I got my first straightener when I was 11 and straightened my hair regularly for years, and sometimes curled it with a curling iron too. I've given up heat as of 2 months ago and have already seen a big difference in my hair!

Tookii
June 2nd, 2011, 12:20 PM
I think I started when I was 11, when I started to blow dry. Then the hormones kicked in and I got really oily hair so ended up washing nearly everyday with horrible suphatey shampoos. Then heat came in when I was about 13...

lapushka
June 2nd, 2011, 12:27 PM
Third year of "high school (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_school#Belgium)", when I was 15 (actually 14 going on 15). I started using sun-in and crimped my hair quite a bit. At least it wasn't frizzy when I crimped it, and it actually had some kind of intentional shape, thing going on. Yeah, the frizz made me do it. :lol:

ETA: just realized I answered this twice. That's it. I'm losin' it. :lol:

curlymarcia
June 2nd, 2011, 12:27 PM
At 27 I saw my first gays. I panicked and color my hair. I was coloring every 3 weeks. I have no many grays but My hair grows quick. Now, I am trying to let grow my natural color.

Knittycat
June 2nd, 2011, 12:28 PM
Excepting the horrid hair cuts I was famous for in elementery school (bowl cut anyone??) I think I started really frying my hair at about 13. I had a friend who was popular and beautiful and did the big bangs and poodle perm and hairspray/curling iron/sizzle thing. I wanted to be just.like.her. My hair suffered tragically!

McFearless
June 2nd, 2011, 12:31 PM
Middle school, where all the horrible things take place. I'd say the 8th grade. Flat ironing became my addiction.

Automne
June 2nd, 2011, 12:49 PM
I started to flat-iron when I was 16.. I wish I never did. My hair would have been longer and in better condition. I wanted long hair but I was doing everything wrong. I didn' t like to have curls at that time.

kyandii
June 2nd, 2011, 12:53 PM
:couch:
Sun-in from about 8.
Crimping from 10
Flat-ironing twice a day everyday on the hottest temperature 12 till about 14
Bleaching at 13
dyeing back to black and then bleaching again until I was 16 :tmi:

amazingly I still have a full head of hair that doesn't hate me that much.

hyettf16
June 2nd, 2011, 01:14 PM
The worst thing I have done was only as soon as I could take a shower, I used the hottest water because I love the feeling. Sometimes there was steam. Then I blOw dried my hair a few times only if it was really cold that day. And on very rare occasions my sister did my hair with hairspray. But I'm very kind to my hair otherwise.

CrystalStar
June 2nd, 2011, 01:30 PM
When I got my first highlights at 10, it was a long road from there! I remained getting the highlights unil 16 before switching to henna. :)

I also used to straighten and blow dry every day for roughly a year.

Ermine
June 2nd, 2011, 01:46 PM
It all started in my teens.
- Got my first hair straightener when I was 14. Also curled it a lot.
- had a tomboy phase where I just didn't care about my hair. I ripped through my hair when it was wet, let it dry by hanging it outside the school bus window on the way to school, didn't really trim it much
- dyed it a few times
- went overboard on the conditioner. Conditioner isn't too bad in itself, but it really weighed down my fine hair and made it look too greasy.

kellinaturalmom
June 2nd, 2011, 02:23 PM
I started using sun-in when I was maybe 12? I really blame my mother for this because she is the one who bought it for me! From then on it was downhill. My hair turned curly around that time so I started straightening it, then came the chemical coloring starting at around 14. About 10 years later it finally hit me (when my hair was totally damaged and I literally had thinning hair at 24 years old) that I needed to change. Now no chemicals (God bless henna!) and NO straightening. My hair is so much happier for it.

katsrevenge
June 3rd, 2011, 01:00 AM
I started to bleach and dye it around the time I was in HS. Before that I pretty much ignored it.

AshNight1214
June 3rd, 2011, 12:51 PM
Oh, my... since I was really little. The first time I went to see the stylist I see now (which was when I was about 10), she just about died because it was so damaged. My mom liked to heat curl and play with my hair because she always had short hair, and we were the "wash every day, put the wet hair in a towel turban, muss it up to towel dry, and rip through the knots with a brush" kind. Thinking back, it amazing that I ever got to BSL!

eterea
June 3rd, 2011, 03:54 PM
I started at 13 with highlights :(

Alexannee10
June 3rd, 2011, 04:38 PM
I began flat ironing my hair at 13 .. and I stopped at 16 so it's not that bad, but my hair is very damaged due to chlorine .. I try to recover ^^

Nicolioli
June 3rd, 2011, 04:52 PM
For me, it all really started in grade school, around age 5 or 6. When I was 3 yo, my mom rented bikes and helmets for me and my sister. The bikes and helmets had been sitting in storage all winter, and my helmet had some sort of fungus growing in it, and when I put it on, it made some of my hair fall out, and to this day I still have a bald spot that is about 1in in diameter on the top of my head (this was in the early 90's, and back then, doctors didn't know what it was). My mom then taught me to use hairspray to cover it so I wouldn't be teased by other kids my age. :(

In middle school, I started blow drying my hair straight. Of course back then, you really don't know how to take care of your hair, so instead of knowing my hair was curly/wavy, I thought of it as 'frizzy' and 'poofy'.

In HS, I started straightening everyday without heat protection through all 4 years. Haha, talk about DAMAGE. I also started dying my hair in my sophomore year, too

Believe me, I'm paying for it now. I've also stopped using hair spray for my bald spot, which was a HUGE step for me. :D

Kathie
June 3rd, 2011, 04:55 PM
I was 14- that was the first time I bleached my hair. 15 years later I stoped.

Taur5684
June 3rd, 2011, 05:08 PM
My mom never taught me that you were supposed to only shampoo your scalp...I also never knew that piling your hair on top of your head when you wash isn't a good idea...I was also guilty of scrubbing the living daylights out of my hair with a towel when it was wet.

When I discovered that these were bad habits on this site and sites like this, I went to my mother with my findings.

Her response: "Yeah...didn't you know that?"

Me: :thud:

Also, when I was a teen I never used conditioner because I thought it made my hair too "greasy" :rolleyes: Turns out I just didn't know what my hair felt like when it was healthy.

Oksana
June 4th, 2011, 04:03 AM
First pair of straighteners at 13 :(

LocustSpawning
June 4th, 2011, 04:06 AM
13.... started straightening my hair constantly.. bleaching, dying mad colours.. ugh!

Wavelin
June 4th, 2011, 04:09 AM
I was 12 when my mother helped me doing thick stripes in my hair. They were supposed to be highlights, but hair is not my mothers strong side :) I liked them though!

Overall, I think that you should experiment if you want to in your teens, it's fun isn't it?

Colourful
June 4th, 2011, 04:46 AM
I started to randomly cut my hair when I was a little girl, about 4 or 6 years old. I started to damage my hair when I was about 10 years old. Lots and lots of hair dying! I swear I was like a colourful dog back then. I had blonde, brown, black, red, orange and violet hair too. Also, used much hair spray and let it be in my hair for days... creepy!

Tuntenut
June 4th, 2011, 04:58 AM
Up until I was about 10 I couldn't care less about my hair. My dad cut it for me, and he also ripped a plastic comb through it now and then, because someone had to do it, and I sure wasn't going to waste my time on something as stupid as hair.

I coloured my hair for the first time with spray colour for Halloween when I was 8. Will come out in 1-2 washes my arse! It took a month for the last traces of black to leave my blonde hair.

First permanent colour was at 12. I kept dying it until I was 15, but not all that often because my sensitive skin doesn't like it, so I guess that saved my hair too!

Mostly my bad hair habits have been neglecting it and just letting it hang there, with the occasional dye/curling iron/hot roller/teasing torture. I've owned several straightening irons, but only used them once or twice. I'm much too impatient to bother.

I was actually quite shocked to read just how young some of you were when you first started dyeing/bleachign your hair, but then I thought about it and realized I was no different. But I have to admit that it baffles me when people tell how their parents forced highlights on them at a very early age. Oh well, I guess that's just the grumpy old man in me talking and shaking his cane. ;)

maysum
June 4th, 2011, 05:02 AM
14 - my mum took me to the hairdressers to get highlights (she was disappointed that the bright white blonde locks of my childhood were darkening to ditchwater blonde) - it was all downhill (curling irons, home perms, lots and lots of dye, friends giving me haircuts etc etc) from there till I hit my twenties.

Ashenputtel
June 4th, 2011, 05:43 AM
Except the dying and the brushing I've never been that bad. I always let my hair air-dry, I have a flat iron and a blow dryer I used them about 5 times a year or less. I always used conditionner and occasionnal deep treatment.

I think I wasn't that bad, and looking at the pictures my hair looked good. But then again I never had it passed BSL.

Ligeia_13
June 6th, 2011, 03:42 AM
I bought my hair straightener when I was 15 (and my hair is actually straight with a couple of kinks, how stupid ). But the real madness began at 18. I bleached all of my hair and dyed it ginger. Then red. Then purple. Then blue.

beccababesx
June 6th, 2011, 06:06 AM
9 or 10 I began straightening my hair for 'special occasions'; I had subtle highlights at 10 and big stripy blonde streaks at 11. I dyed those out with chemical dye and highlighted maybe 5 times until I was around 13 when I dyed it out again with chemical dye. I was using a straighten every day by 11, washing and blowdrying with a round brush every other day, and backcombing it every day from around 15.

woolyleprechaun
June 6th, 2011, 06:56 AM
I had lovely hair until I started the bad habbits when I was about 11. Had a disasterous head of highlights, and then more and more disasters followed:( and now, 11 years on, Ive finaly got my hair into good enough nick to grow back to tailbone!!! soooo many wasted years! Ive lost count of the times Ive had to shave it all off and start from scratch. :mad:

Audrey Horne
June 6th, 2011, 07:05 AM
Puberty. That's when everything started haha then choped it all off at the age of 13 to the shortest bob possible. And then it became shorter and shorter year by year.

Squeak toy
June 6th, 2011, 11:26 AM
I have not done many damaging things to my hair, but my mother did not teach me good care. I piled it on my head, washed it harshly every night, ripped it out with a plastic brush.

Ribbon
June 6th, 2011, 11:42 AM
I personally didn't do too much damage, but when I was really little my mom would brush my hair wet and pull knots out. I would protest about it hurting but she would say, "But it's got such tangles!"

Yes, mom, maybe it's because you're brushing it harshly when it's wet! She cut bangs for me too - and they were terribly uneven. People thought I had cut them myself.

I always washed my hair by piling it on top of my head and scrubbing - I just started the proper way within the last year.

One thing I did right since childhood was rarely dry my hair - I can't stand the noise of vaccuums or hair dryers, so that was the original reason I did not.

Amber_Maiden
June 6th, 2011, 11:47 AM
Probably started with my mother, who would have to cut tangles and knots of my hair... When she wasn't around to cut them out (after I had moved out), I'd cut them out myself, and rip the brush through my tangly head of hair. I saw her dye and perm her hair, straighten it.... she'd straighten my hair with an iron, right on the ironing board... and she hates the colour of my hair (too red for her), and she'd make me dye it brown all the time. I finally stopped listening to her... and I guess making it more red (which is what I like) is also a form of rebelling against her... and her damaging hair ways... I remember when I was a kid, she'd cut my hair short like a boys, when it was too tangly... people actually thought I was a boy when I was little, up until I was 13 (when i got boobs)...

Qwackie
June 6th, 2011, 12:00 PM
I was 14 when I first bleached. And now that I'm 15, I'm growing that bleach out and stuff.