(no subject)

[rivka]

Alex cut her hair. Again. I am completely disgusted with her. The last thing I had time for today was an emergency salon appointment.

I don't think today was the first time, either. There was a section near the front that I had noticed a while ago was suspiciously short. She denied cutting it. (This time our nanny caught her.)

She chose a new style which is quite pretty, and I confess that I am secretly delighted that I won't have to try to wrestle her hair into a ballet bun anymore, because I sucked at it. And her hair was difficult to care for because it's so fine. But for God's sake I have frequently offered to take her to the damn salon if she wants her hair cut. It is completely ridiculous of her to chew at it with scissors.



I wish there were a way to keep people from fussing over how cute she looks, because I don't want her to get a lot of positive attention for misbehaving. But of course there isn't a way.

Comments

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

One of the useful things I got from the last parenting book I read is that it can be really useless to ask a child "Why?" when they do something. They may not know, or their reason may be completely unrelated to grownup reasons.

I remember being four and ripping the ribbon trim off my blankie, because it made such an interesting sound and felt interesting when the serging holding the ribbon on unravelled. Kind of a "brrrrrrprprprprprrprpr." I had not connected "continuing to explore this interesting sound and sensations" to "no more satiny ribbon trim that I like to feel on my fingers on this blankie." I was very sad when the ribbon trim was gone for good. I'm pretty sure I gave my parents an unsatisfactory answer when they asked why I had done this.

About a year and a half ago, G. decided that the ladder to his bunk bed would look better as a part of a spaceship in Star Wars. So he took indelible marker to the unfinished wood. When his dad asked "Why did you do that?" G very reasonably answered that he wanted it to look more like the inside of a space ship. When his dad asked why he hadn't come to us and let us come up with a way to do this, we got that blank look. Eventually his dad decided that G.'s furniture is G's furniture, and if he wants to ruin it, fine. It's still functional and safe.

Rivka, I know it can be really frustrating when they refuse to do logical things and when you want them to just this once let you get through a challenging time without causing extra work. And Alex's age is tough, because she's presents as a more-or-less rational small person -- she forms complete sentences, and can more or less tell you what she wants, and is capable of these astonishing ideas and of making really interesting connections. So it's even more discombobulating when she goes and does something you've told her not to do, for no good reason. But, you know, she's not tormenting her little brother. And she's not doing this on purpose to spite you (though, yes, it may be attention-getting behaviour). She's not doing anything really dangerous, or damaging anyone else's property. She's just making herself look a bit peculiar, possibly because she wants attention, but to my mind the more likely reason is that she was sitting there with the scissors and she was bored and she noticed her hair, and then it made an interesting sound, and fell in an interesting way when she cut it and it didn't occur to her until she was caught (or until you asked her about it) that this might be a bad thing to do.

Kids. They can be jerks sometimes. It's a good thing they are cute.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

She's just making herself look a bit peculiar, possibly because she wants attention, but to my mind the more likely reason is that she was sitting there with the scissors and she was bored and she noticed her hair, and then it made an interesting sound, and fell in an interesting way when she cut it and it didn't occur to her until she was caught (or until you asked her about it) that this might be a bad thing to do.

This, exactly.

[ailbhe]

Yeah, this. We've been storing scissors on a D-clip hanging from a hook to help the impulse-control thing.

(Also, we don't fix own-haircut jobs, though the emergency salon option doesn't seem available to us anyway because it's something we find difficult and expensive to do; we did fix child B's style when child A cut the hair).