The only time I ever get knots is when my hair hasn't been conditioned properly, so this might be the problem, you're not conditioning in that area well enough? I'm sorry  ??? I'm not quite sure, I've never heard of those knots! Are they in the back of your head?

I get them too...they almost bring you to tears trying to get them out .   When I do get them I use olive oil or conditioner to get them out.  I use really liberal amounts so it works like a lubricant so I can work the knots out a little at a time with minimal damage to my hair and minimal tears for me....Hope this will help.

My recommendation:  Johnson & Johnson's kid's spray-in detangler.  The generic versions are almost as good, and considerably less expensive.  This is usually found near the baby shampoo.   

With curly hair, anything to get knots out is a plus.  As a little kid, my grandmother always used Avon's one-step on my hair - which I'm not sure they even carry any more.  But the J&J stuff is easier and less messy.

Janet Callahan

I have the same problem, except usually when I wear a top with a collar or if I sleep with it down.  Now I make it a point to wear it up when I have to wear a collar and make sure  I braid it before going to bed. 

to get them out,  i just patiently work at them with a large tooth comb, from the bottom up.  Gradually, they work themselves out!  Good luck!!

I don't get painful knots at the back of my neck, but the hair at the back of my neck does still tend to mat, which is the only part of my head where the hair still does that. There's also lots of breakage and splits. I also have observed that I have some weird wavy/curly action going on there, and had been assuming that this was a result of some sort of mixed hair type at the back of my neck.

BUT...

During a S&D this morning, I noticed that all the wavy and curly hairs were sections at the ends of normal straight hairs. So this is all damaged hair, stretched out by detangling, and the waviness and curliness is causing it to mat and require frequent detangling, which causes more wavy/curly sections to form...

I clipped out the wavy pieces, and trimmed the curlies back, too. It was hard to bring myself to do this, as the hair at the back of my neck is so much shorter than the rest of my hair. Hopefully, this will work out for the best, and I'll start to see some growth, though some of the wavies are so close to the scalp that I can't get them in front of my face to see and clip them.

This explains something else, too. I have been noticing that locks that thin to nothing are only around the hairline, and there is also some damage on the surface, which appears as frizzies on the surface of my hair. But my hair is straight, why should a frizzy curl up? Because it was stretched out and broken in detangling, is why. So theoretically, trimming the last half or full inch of a frizzy hair that shows atypical curling should allow it to grow out and stop curling up.

I need a hair minion to do these things for me.

I wanted to bump this up because I never had a problem with these knots....until now.

What causes these things!  Youch!

I get the tiny knots at the nape, where my hair is a bit curlier.  The hair rubs on collars, etc and manages to tie itself into knots.