(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

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

ARGH. I'm so sorry. She does look slightly sheepish, perhaps, in the first picture..... (And she looks cute, but I know that doesn't help.)

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I have one of those "clearly not a parent" questions, and it's one that doesn't need, require, or demand an answer: why does Alex's misbehavior result in an emergency salon appointment on a day you clearly don't have time for one? Is it because the misbehavior would draw even more "isn't that cute?/you're so precocious" attention from people seeing the mess her self-cut made of her hair?

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment.

Maybe if you institute a rule that any haircuts she gives herself will last for at least one week before you take her to get it fixed, she'll quit doing it?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah - if it'd been up to me, I'd have left her hair a horrible mess, ready for all the Christmas photographs! And then, when she'd got to the dating age, I'd have had those photos on the very top of the pile of embarrassing photos to show to her potential partners. "This was the year when Madam decided she could cut her own hair...".

Probably just as well I'm planning to not have kids, eh?

[charlottezweb.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Other than a worry about her cutting herself w/the scissors, what bothers you about it? I know families draw the line of bodily autonomy in different places, but I was just wondering?

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I think my parents would have given me a crew cut! I always got home haircuts as a kid, and anything with the clippers is very easy to deliver. (As are the ponytail-and-chop class of haircuts, which look about as cute as what she's got in the photos and take no salon trip and negligible time.)

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that. I wouldn't have taken her, and she would have had to deal with any embarrassment or fallout from being in the pageant with a homemade haircut.

How did the dress rehearsal go?

[marici.livejournal.com]

You were very upset she cut her hair the first time, right? If she's repeating it, seems like she's trading positive attention for greater amounts of negative attention. If there's a standard penalty for misbehavior, maybe use that to enforce the ordinariness of hair-cutting? Also, what everyone up there has been saying. As long as she's not endangering herself, her failure to plan is not your emergency.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

She is absolutely lovely. And growing up *so* fast!

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I have a suspiciously short section near the front of my hair, but it's because that section just doesn't grow! It's frustrating now that I've grown all my hair out, but I never noticed it when I was a kid because I always had bangs, and it grows to about chin-length.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's because while Alex is perfectly happy with the job she'd done herself, other people look at her and think "Who the hell did that to her hair? And why haven't her parents fixed it? Slackers, poor kid" and so forth.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

That development of impulse control curve can be a total pain in the rear.

I remember being older than Alex and carving my name into a dresser with a pin and knowing it was bad but still carving, carving...

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the solution might be to reduce the cuteness of her hair. Let her have a perfectly acceptable but very utilitarian 'do for a few months. Don't style (har har har) it as punishment, but as an orderly version of what she's doing -- a non-professional haircut.

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

My daughter did the chop the night before her first day in kindergarten. I suspect that her behavior was stress-related that time.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as well, not being a parent.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's it exactly.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly well. Special Snowflake didn't turn up, but the remaining kings were lovely. Most of the kids know their lines. They all look unbelievably adorable in their costumes.

It may all work out!

[selki.livejournal.com]

Same here. So she's a do-it-yourself kid. OK.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

This. The attention-getting thing. She's getting a very satisfactory reaction from you at a time when you're preoccupied with other things.

I get that you want it to look good for the pageant and Christmas, but I'm betting most adults with children will understand the eyeroll and shrug accompanying the explanation.

[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.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also? If I were you I'd explain to her, calmly, that the next time she does that there will be no quick fixes and she can live with it until it grows back. Once is experimentation, twice is testing the waters. Three times? Yeah, not so much.

[moobabe.livejournal.com]

Hannah had REALLY long hair when she was Alex's age, and I lived in perpetual fear that she was going to cut off a chunk of her hair. It was kind of a relief when we got her hair cut in a tiny little bob.

Alex does look adorable, but I'd be glad to call her up and say, "Wow, your mom posted a picture of your new haircut and it looks AWFUL!" ;)

[torontoteacher.livejournal.com]

I totally empathise with this, since my four year old routinely wears his "favourite outfit" which consists of skin tight green and blue leggings with an orange and green striped shirt.

I *know* that nobody is going to look at this child and think "You know, I bet his mom picked out those clothes." and yet, I feel like I should *do* something about it.

*sigh* Why is parenting so hard? And when we all know that, why do we feel the need to judge each other?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

After giving this some thought, I'd say that for a child who is too young to really notice that her hair looks awful, this is no consequence at all. For a child old enough to notice that her hair looks awful, it's a punishment based on humiliation. That's something I won't do.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

It's a shame Kenny Loggins can't help (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/12/year-kenny-loggins-ruined-christmas.html).

(No, really, this isn't just a *random* link. See, if she ran into the Myth Of Kenny Loggins during a hair cutting escapade, she'd probably be suitably traumatized to avoid it in the future.)

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

The two times my son has had his hair cut, he's started the job himself. Both times, he knew perfectly well that all he had to do was ask and we'd get him a haircut. I got the impression that it was his way of maintaining control and making it fully his decision. Or possibly his way of making the decision in such a way that he couldn't change his mind.

(And the second time he did it was the day after Christmas. Must be something about the season.)

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

OMG, that is the funniest Christmas story EVER.

You know, when Kenny Loggins cuts his hair, it grows back immediately. With curls.

[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.

[thette.livejournal.com]

I remember when I cut my own hair (and eyebrows, unfortunately). I was bored, there was a scissor, and I didn't think much further. I think I was nine at the time...

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

My take on it is that it's a natural consequence. Humiliation would be if you took a pair of scissors to her hair and tried to make it even worse, or if you told other people in front of her how dreadful it was.

As for other people thinking less of you as a parent, 1) who cares what they think, and 2) I assume that at that age, the child has a lot more control over appearance than, say, an infant would. It seems like it's been pretty standard for a few yrs now for parents of kids in E's cohort to shrug and say, "She dressed herself today."

Anyway. I'm glad the dress rehearsal went well, and I hope Snowflake's mom doesn't cause any drama tonight!

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

How about, if she cuts it again, she has to live with it a while.

Of course, that means you do, too.

The new cut is, of course, simply adorable.

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

Tamsin has occasionally cut her own hair with scissors, but I draw the line at her cutting her clothes. Hair grows back, but I'm not going to pay for nice clothes that she's just going to cut up. That's when I confiscate her scissors and she's either not allowed to use them at all or only under supervision (depending on how egregiously she violated the 'no-cutting-your-clothes rule"). We only had to confiscate the scissors a couple times before she stopped cutting clothes. I also instituted a brief moratorium on buying or making any new clothes, on the basis that I didn't feel I could trust her to take care of them. (A "But I caaaaan..." "You have to SHOW me you can." conversation then ensued...)

Do you think confiscating Alex's scissors would work? With Tamsin, she's at a stage where she is asserting her "big-kid-ness," which seems to be why the taking away scissor privilege works.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Thanks, for the insight and also for answering at such a busy time.

Merry Christmas and much love'n'joy to your entire family!

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

I was a lot older than Alex (but still pre-teen) when I began an attempt to shave my head. (It felt really cool, too.)

It wasn't discovered until some months later.

It took more than twenty years for me to get around to explaining to my mom /why/ when we'd gone to get my hair cut before going off to girl scout camp that summer the stylist had Not Said Anything and done the back very, very short.

[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).

[ailbhe]

It is very beautiful.