Mom—and Daughters—Learn How Hard It Is Remove Diaper Cream From Hair

As a parent you know your kid is going to get into just about everything. But you're rarely prepared when they get something in their hair that's impossible to get out. That's precisely what a New York mom, Wendy Pryce, realized recently when her daughters Jamie, 4, and Morgan, 3, slathered themselves in diaper cream in an effort to look like Elsa from Frozen.

Pryce told TODAY Parents that her first instinct was to put them in the bathtub. "That was my first mistake — getting their hair wet," she recalled. "Zinc oxide is water insoluble."

After spending three hours scrubbing her kids, Googling her options, and resigning herself to the possibility that she might have to shave the girls' heads, she reportedly shared a panicked post in a Facebook group for Manhattan moms. "Please any mamas have tips for removing DESITIN from Hair?" Pryce wrote. "We've tried bath soap and Dawn. Thank you."

She included a photo of her daughters coated in the thick white goop.

All in all, Pryce received 440 responses from parents who suggested an array of fix-it strategies, including cornstarch and baby oil, which she decided to give a whirl.

She explained to TODAY that she initially coated her kids' heads with cornstarch, which would absorb the grease and stick to the diaper cream, and then she followed up with baby oil, because "oil removes oil." She then used a fine-tooth comb to brush it out. The final step: Dawn dishwashing detergent, which has been used for decades to clean birds following oil spills.

You'd think that after all of that, the diaper cream would be out of the girls' hair, but she had to repeat the process five days in a row to fully remove it.

According to Dr. Adam Friedman, a professor and chair of dermatology at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences who spoke to TODAY, the baby oil was "probably what did the trick, though the Dawn dish soap, being quite basic on the pH scale, probably added to the solubility making it easier to get off."

Parents.com reached out to Johnson & Johnson and has yet to receive a response.

Here's hoping Pryce's experience serves to preempt similar hair disasters from plaguing other parents.