“Do you want me to smooth your hair before you leave?”

It’s a refrain nearly every morning in our house, at least those many mornings when my daughter has not had her hair styled in braids in the last week or two. Given the limited skill of my own hands, and the cost of professional braiding, those braided mornings are few and far between these days. So when my 8-year-old rises, it’s usually in a style from the day before, or the day before that, and one that’s got a certain slept-on fuzziness.

When she says, “Nah, I’ll just wear a headband,” I feel both pride and anxiety welling up in my chest. The fuzzier her look, the prouder I am that she doesn’t care, and the more worried I am that she’s making a risky call.

My daughter loves her hair, and that is something that brings great pride and pleasure to me, as her mom. Because hair, for Black women and girls, is a complicated thing. There are those who think it should be worn natural; there are those who think it should be sleek. There are very strong feelings, and not much obvious common ground, except for this:  Black hair may not be taken for granted, or left untended. (And if you’re the white mom of a Black girl, perhaps all the more so…)

When my daughter was three, she took scissors to her hair. As it turns out, blunt-tipped safety scissors, the kind used for cutting construction paper, are actually brilliant at chopping locks (as long as one’s not aiming for a precision cut). Apparently, my daughter was aiming for a simple change in silhouette. She wanted her hair to “go down” like her friend April’s. April was curly-headed, too. But April was white; her hair went down.

I remember putting my hands in my daughter’s hair to assess the damage, and having masses of perfect curls tumble out into my hands and to the floor. I tried to reassure her, “It’s okay; it’ll grow back.” But the truth is, Black hair can grow very slowly.

That night, a friend came over and created emergency, camouflage cornrows. Then we found a reasonably-priced professional to do it weekly. When that woman moved, another friend recommended someone who could do long individual braids, with extensions, that would last for many weeks. The cost was astronomical, at least by our standards. But my friend was having her child’s hair done this way. She didn’t have to do anything but bundle the braids into pigtails in the morning, and she didn’t have to carve out braiding time every single week. We were both working moms. It seemed the thing to do.

And so we did, for many years, until we (my daughter and I) decided “enough.” I re-learned how to style hair—into pigtail twists or braids, into buns, side ponytails—pretty much everything but fine braiding. I loved the time we spent together, the richness and scents of the moisturizing and styling creams we chose, and the sense of mastery I felt when my daughter looked in the mirror and beamed with pleasure.

Most days now, we smooth her hair into a bun, or into two pigtails that are then braided or put into multiple twists, or occasionally (far less now than when she was little) left in curly bundles that remind me of nothing more than hydrangea blossoms. In one of her favorite styles, each pigtail is smoothed and twisted gently, and then fastened at the base of the other, creating a sort of tiara.

This summer, we went to a friend’s salon and had double-stranded flat twists done that, a week later, were unraveled into a “twist out.” For one day, it was as close to “down” as my daughter’s hair had ever come. The next day it popped up into a loose Afro, that she happily sported with a headband to camp.

Any time I style her hair myself, of fix her hair in the morning, I try to get the shorter hairs around her face to lay flat. Her “edges,” they’re called. It’s important that they be smooth, not fuzzy, you see. I’ve utterly internalized that. And for whatever reason, at 8, my daughter has not. Somehow, she either hasn’t gotten negative messages from her Black peers at school, or has chosen to ignore them. And truthfully, I’m grateful. Because I’ve found it quite the challenge, those edges. But also because when it comes down to it, I want her to care about her hair, and honor the cultural imperatives around it, but not too, too much.

When gymnast Gabby Douglass competed in the 2012 Olympics, she wore her (straightened) hair in a ponytail, aided by clips and gel. The style was the same as that worn by many of her white teammates, and truthfully, to me, her hair—and her “edges”—looked just fine. But it wasn’t “done,” in the eyes of many, who criticized her casual look on the Internet and social media.

When asked about the hair-related e-chatter, the Gold Medalist replied, “Are you kidding me? I just made history. And you’re focusing on my hair?”

As uncomfortable as I sometimes do feel letting my daughter go out into the world with fuzzy edges, I am grateful that she has within her the chutzpah and priorities of a Gold Medalist.

“I’m a great kid facing a great new day,” I imagine her (or hope she’s) thinking. “And you want me to stress out about my hair?”