My daughter (who is three and a half) chews her nails. Bites them right off to the flesh. It’s horrible and today I thought ‘Maybe if I give her some gum to chew on, her mouth will be occupied enough and she’ll leave her nails alone’. So, I gave her half a stick of sugar free strawberry gum to experiment with. She didn’t like it and threw it in the trash.
I didn’t think any more about it until I went to brush her hair. In the bottom layers I just couldn’t get the brush through. I checked for what I thought was one horrifically huge knot only to find this:
I panicked a little bit. I remember from childhood that girls who got gum stuck in their hair got huge chunks cut off. I separated as many strands of hair as I could from the gooey mass, but the big clump wouldn’t budge. Then a faint memory popped into my head- my mother-in-law once told me that you can get gum out of hair with peanut butter. Since I had peanut butter in my fridge, I figured I’d give it a go. I took a glob of it on my finger and rubbed it into the hair right around the gum. Like so (yes, I am aware that it looks like diarrhea in her hair):
Then I carefully pulled the gum out- it slid right down! I was really excited at how easily it came off. Here is her peanut-buttery hair:
And here the remains of the evil-doer gum:
I wet a cloth and wiped the peanut butter off, then dried and brushed the strand. The gum is completely out and I am so happy!
After reading up on it a little, I discovered that the oil in the peanut butter is what does the magic with the gum. Therefore I recommend using all natural peanut butter that doesn’t contain any sugar, etc.- just peanuts.
(Please excuse the poor picture quality- I had peanut butter all over my hands. Also, I’m not putting the gum back in her hair to take better photos…)