Forty-year-old Strider Patton loves being a hands-on dad. He picks out the sweater, helps with the shoes, and zips the backpack. But when it came to hair, he admits, he was in over his head.

"My wife needed to get out to work in the morning for her children's theater she has in the city," he said, "and so I was with my daughter and it was so much harder than I thought."

Like most of us, he turned to YouTube. But that only made things worse.

"A lot of the other moms that have huge hairstyle accounts are just flying," he said.

So Patton started making his own tutorials—slow, simple, and designed for dads like him. He wasn't trying to go viral. He just wanted his five-year-old daughter Imogen to be proud.

"When I started to get half-decent, people would come up to my daughter and say, 'Oh, I love your hair—did your mommy braid it?' And she'd say, 'No. Dad braids.' "

The name stuck. Now, "" is more than just a hobby. It's a movement, with more than 350,000 followers on social media.

Daniel Hong, a fitness trainer from Vancouver, Washington, one of many dads who've picked up a brush thanks to Patton's videos, said braiding has become about more than just hair.

"She can tell me about what she's coloring or maybe what she's watching or what she did that day," Hong said.

As for Patton, he's built up a serious braiding portfolio: "Your French braid, your Dutch braid, your fishtail braid… and then you can move on to a waterfall, dragon, bubble braid…"

But the only review that really matters comes from the client in the chair. When asked who braids better—Mom or Dad—Imogen didn't hesitate.

"Daddy," she whispered.

• San Francisco