Bay Area dad teaches hair braiding as part of movement to help other dads bond with their daughters

SAN FRANCISCO - A Bay Area man who has honed some high-level hair-braiding skills, is using his talents to help others like him practice "being the dads our daughters will remember."

Strider Patton is a father of two and the man behind "Dad Braids." 

Some might call it a movement or even a reflection of a culture shift, with dads departing from old-fashioned, traditional gender roles to connect with their daughters in different ways.

The backstory:

For the 41-year-old San Francisco man, it started simply as a passion project. 

When he became a new girl-dad with his firstborn, he decided he wanted to learn how to do his daughter’s hair.

More than just a ‘ponytail dad’

What they're saying:

"For whatever reason, right away, I just wanted to be more than a ponytail kind of girl dad. I just know all the stereotypes," Patton said. "You know, girl gets dropped off, hair’s a mess. Everyone laughs. ‘So it must have been dad this morning,’ or something like that. And I was like, that is not gonna happen on my watch. My daughter is gonna have super cute hair."

So, Patton said that he did what any millennial dad would do: "I hopped onto YouTube and tried to learn some lessons."

Working with long hair is hard

The dad said it wasn’t long before he learned how difficult manipulating long hair was for the average guy. 

"You know, most of us have worked with short hair on ourselves our lives," he explained. "So the second you start working with the longer hair, it is hard."

And all the videos he came across were made by moms. 

"So they're just flying, they're going so fast. And sometimes they speed their videos up on top of already being fast," Patton said. 

He realized dads like him didn’t have any knowledge of just the basics, like brushing out hair or using a hair tie, let alone weaving a simple three-strand braid.

The double French braid

So, after spending some time learning these basics, the dad said he set out with a goal: completing a double french braid.

"For whatever reason, that is my peak of my mountain that I'm climbing," he recalled, adding, "And it took me so long." 

After practicing and practicing, finally, one day, he reached his goal. 

"I just nailed double French braids. I was so proud of myself," Patton said, as he shared what he did next. "I put her in her cute little dress and walked her up to the nearest playground in San Francisco," he said.

Patton, who is an artist by trade, said he wanted to show off his elaborate coiffure.   

"There, a mom bent down to her and said, ‘Oh, your braids are so beautiful. Did your mommy do those?’" the dad recalled. 

His daughter then just pointed to him and simply said, "Dad braids."

"That woman's jaw hit the floor, and then she said something which really started all this," Patton recalled. "She said, ‘You could teach my husband a thing or two.’ And I was like, ‘Huh.’ And that kind of just stuck." 

Word spread 

In his daughter’s preschool community, word would get around that Patton was the stylist behind the little girl’s fancy hair.

That prompted dads to come up to him at the school playground asking for tips, which he gladly shared.

And as he offered his tutorials to inquisitive, eager to learn dads, it occurred to him that there may be a wider audience that would benefit from him sharing his braiding knowledge.

"I'm already doing it every morning. So I thought, how about I just set up the phone, put it online. Maybe there's a few hundred other dads that might find this helpful," Patton said.  

Huge online response

What happened next was completely unexpected. "The account just took off like a rocket ship," he said.

The response dwarfed anything he had done for more than a decade on social media, both for accounts that featured his own art or the one for his wife’s business, a children's theater company.  

"In 10 days, Dad Braids absolutely decimated 10 years on Instagram with my career," he shared, laughing. "And so I clearly tapped into something very important, needed and helpful and fun."

In the first year alone, his videos and posts reached 50 million people.

It's been two years now. And his following is still growing.

On his website, he put out a call to those dads out there seeking "calmer mornings, deeper connection, and a little more ease in the daily rush."

Patton's tutorials have been seen by dads around the globe. He has followers from countries including Europe, South America, South East Asia and South Africa. Outside the U.S., the next biggest following comes from Australian dads.     

Across his platforms, he has amassed more than 735,000 followers.

Messages from dads

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Since he’s started Dad Braids, he’s also been flooded with emails and testimonials from dads around the world who have benefited from his online videos and workshops.

"People started to open up more about how this was really actually impacting their family's lives. And I started to get views into different families of all different capacities," Patton said. 

The dads shared their stories, some coming from men going through divorces and dealing with shared custody of their daughter, others who suddenly found themselves as the sole parent.

"Several unfortunate widowers whose wife has passed," Patton shared, "All of a sudden everything is on the dad." 

There have also been messages from parental units that are made up of two dads. 

"Just adopted a daughter, and they've only had short hair their whole lives, and now they got this little girl and how do they do it?" Patton recounted.

He also shared one of the most moving messages he received from a dad whose work kept him away from his family for extended periods.  

"I'll never forget this dad, works on an offshore oil rig for three weeks at a time. And when he has a week home with his family, it's absolutely precious," Patton shared. 

That dad viewed this time that he got, doing his daughter’s hair, as a special bonding moment, turning an activity that’s often merely a rushed task that had to be done to get out the door into "an opportunity for connection, a moment together," Patton explained.   

Cultural shift

He said he believed that the interest from these dads and their desire to seize opportunities to connect in new ways reflected a cultural shift on how many people viewed what it means to be a parent.

He pointed to a recent study that he read, about how millennial dads are three times more engaged in their kids' lives than their own fathers were.

"I think that's just a net positive, you know, dad's able and more interested in being willing to jump into being a part of their families in different ways," Patton reflected, stressing that it’s not only dads he’s heard from. His followers also include moms and other family members who show as caretakers, like aunts, uncles and grandparents.  

The feedback he’s received from his followers has provided him with a view of various approaches toward tackling fatherhood and varied family dynamics in different cultures. 

But what he hoped would be a collective and valued takeaway for them, as they’re armed with a brush and some braiding skills, is that they’ve gained meaningful, treasured moments connecting and bonding with their child.

"People really just started saying how much just that subtle shift has really changed the relationship with their daughters," Patton explained.  

Dad Braids events

In addition to online workshops, he’s also held a few in-person events at the family’s studio, The Rabbit Hole Children’s Theater.

"They’re great fun," he said. "A daughter-dad big group together is very magical."

The gatherings offer not only an opportunity to learn hairstyling skills but also a chance to meet up with other dads who are there because they want to connect and be there for their daughters.

The Toolbox

As his Dad Braids enterprise kind of happened organically, so has other aspects of what he offers on his site.  

One of them includes The Dad Braids Toolbox.

It’s something he created on his own, out of the need to organize all the items he had collected as a stylist for his daughter.  

"Right away in my journey, I just would take my wife's brush and hair ties and stuff, and then I was like, oh man, I kind of want some cuter scrunchies and bows and things like that. So I started to get some more gear, and then I was like, this is just a mess. It's all over the place," he said. 

The initial solution was to throw it all in a basket, which just overflowed. So then he came up with another idea. Patton ran down to the hardware store to get a toolbox for all of his daughter’s hair supplies. 

"I didn't think anything of it," he said, but then, "People started seeing it in my videos and were just like beaten down the door. Like when is the official Dad Braids toolbox being released?"

He said a dad in the community reached out and said his family business, which creates branded merchandise, offered to help put together the official toolbox, which is now available on his website.

For $199, it comes fully stocked, he said, with all the items he wished he had when he first started learning how to do his daughter’s hair. 

While it’s been a fun addition to his venture, Patton acknowledged he’s not sure if he’ll continue, as he noted, being a dad, working on his own career as an artist as well as supporting his wife’s work — it’s a lot.

"Just too many balls in the air, you know, we want to stay focused on everything else we're doing," the dad said. "Right now, I just see dad braids as an online community, just learning hair, talking about parenting."

The Scrunchie Course

Other aspects he’s excited about as part of that online community also include a fun way for the dads who want to up their braiding game and challenge themselves beyond learning the simple hairdos.

Enter "The Scrunchie Course," a creative way to level up. 

"Some dads want to keep going, and so I kind of created five levels of braiding, from absolute beginner to master. I kind of treat it like jujitsu, with different belt colors. But here we got different scrunchie colors," Patton explained. "So you work up from a white scrunchie to a pink scrunchie. And so, Pink scrunchie is our black belt, and that's like 5% of the audience."

That course costs $99 and comes with a structured collection of videos and other tools, including a set of five scrunches to mark each advanced level. 

Patton said the idea of having a variety of braiding styles to work with is akin to having a variety of different meals a parent might have to offer his family.

"I think it's just like another thing about society and fatherhood and parenting and family life today. The way I see it is like, why would I only know how to cook one kind of dinner?" he asked. 

He subscribes to the idea of having options for his family. 

"If it's on me to get my daughter ready and out the door, then we got some hairstyles," Patton explained. "She's like, ‘Dad, I want bubble braids today. I want a fishtail. Let's do French braids.’ It's like, ‘I got you.' Boom, boom, boom."

Teaming up with Bay FC 

Another product of the work he’s done through Dad Braids will be an upcoming collaboration with the professional women's soccer team Bay FC.

"My daughter and three of her friends, we're gonna go to the team, and they're going to meet the players, and we are going to talk soccer tips and hairstyles for game day," Patton shared. 

On August 1, Dad Braids will hold its first ever Stadium Day at PayPal Park in San Jose in Bay FC's game against Seattle Reign FC.

For the occasion, Patton is making a special themed "play list," a collection of videos highlighting good hairstyles to do when playing soccer.   

As part of the event, dads will be invited to come to the game with their daughters.

"They're giving us the skybox, and so all the dads are going to show up with daughters already braided and stuff. And we're gonna have prizes, and it's gonna be a whole bunch of fun," Patton said, noting discount packages will be available for participants. 

These moments remembered

Big picture view:

Never in his wildest dreams did the dad expect Dad Braids to explode into something so big. 

For Patton, a profound reminder of how significant of an impact this seemingly simple act of a dad doing his daughter's hair can be, is when he hears from those who look back at these shared moments with their own dad.

"Adult women and parents, you know, moms now, they're like, ‘My dad did my hair, and it's like, the best memories I had with him,’" he shared. "It's not like I was ever looking for an ROI on this, but I'm like there, there it is. Adult women saying my dad was the different one and went against the grain. Great stories of dads just going into the salon and paying a hairdresser to be like, ‘Hey, can you teach me some stuff?' And just dads independently learning and doing it. It's just incredible."

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Those memories are among the most cherished they have of the early days with dad. And for Patton, these stories drive him to keep doing this work, this passion project of his, which he hopes will shape relationships and affect people's lives for years to come. 

"The impact that this has given me or given the world, it came out of absolute left field. I could have never imagined anything like this. The letters and the messages that I receive, it's the most fulfilling thing I've ever done," the Bay Area dad said.

On his website, along with tips, links, and products, he offers encouragement and reminders to dads that "presence matters more than perfection." 

Ultimately, it’s not about how good of a braider you are. And this act of taking the time to sit with your child to do her hair, may be a metaphor for parenthood as a whole.

"It’s about the connection," Patton reminds dads. "Don’t worry if it’s messy. Don’t worry if it’s not ‘perfect.’ What matters is showing up. Quiet acts of love, one braid at a time."

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