Greg Wickherst is a single father to his daughter, Izzy. Over a year has passed since he and Izzy’s mother split up. Ever since then, the 3-year-old spends most of her time with dad, giving him a front-row seat to all the crazy things that come with raising a baby girl.
When Izzy’s hair started growing longer, Greg found some of his girl-raising skills to be inadequate. He realized that he can barely do a simple ponytail, and understandably so, since he’s been shaving his head since he was 24.
“Hair has definitely not been my thing,” Greg said.
After many failed attempts — including an ambitious crack at the pony-tail-with-a-vacuum technique — Greg decided to seek professional help. “At that point I was like, I want to try different styles,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the dad that just didn’t know how to do my daughter’s hair.”
So the Colorado-based dad reached out to the cosmetology department of IntelliTec College, where he worked as an admissions representative. The program supervisor sent Greg to one of her best students, who taught him to do the bun, the French braid, and the waterfall braid, to name a few. “After meeting with [the] student I learned a bunch of different styles,” Greg said, “I also found it was a bonding experience between me and my daughter.”
“It blew my mind how easy it was to do a bun,” he said. “I thought it was something super special, like real intricate, especially the one where you don’t finish pulling the ponytail.”
“I thought, Oh my god, that’s so pretty for something that’s so simple,” he added. “I don’t think most guys know that it’s that simple.”
All the lessons have given Greg a fair bit of confidence in experimenting with more intricate hairstyles.
“The next one I want to do, is to try and do her hair like Elsa’s.”
Within one month, Greg got the hang of it and started sharing pictures of Izzy’s various hairstyles on Facebook. Since then, his page has gotten more traffic, mostly from other moms who give him a few tips here and there. Recently he also received a lot of attention from various media outlets, something which he says confuses him.
“It blows my mind,” he said. “I think it’s silly that a dad is getting attention for showing interest in his daughter’s hair. I really do,” Greg says.
“But on the other hand, I am tired of dads being portrayed as idiots, on the commercials and on TV, where moms get all the credit. So if this shows that yes, dads can be a good parent, then I’m all for it.”
He says that his advice to parents is to enjoy every single minute of of their growing kid’s lives.
“The good and the not-so-good. Even the blowout diapers, the tantrums in the store, and the late night, up sick, catching-throw-up-in-your-bare-hands nights. Because it doesn’t last forever.”
“My favorite part of the day is when I wake her up and get her out of bed and she’s still sleepy, so she nuzzles her face into my neck. … That love right there, feeling that love and that trust is the most rewarding part,” he said.
“All I want is for Izzy to know that her Daddy loves her, and will do anything to make sure she has the best childhood that I could provide,” he said. “Nobody is perfect, but I’ve learned as a parent that we all do what we can to make our kids happy.”
