Violet Voices

How To Cut Your Child’s Hair…Badly

I don’t cut my own children’s hair. I can’t even manage cutting my own bangs without it looking like a three year old did it. But in this case last week, my lack of hair-cutting talent was just what this stay-at-home mom needed.

My oldest daughter has a thing for scissors. Starting when she was a pre-schooler, she has on various occasions done violence to her own hair as well as her younger sister’s hair. I don’t know why. She’s 8 now, and you’d think she’d have tired of this sort of misbehavior by now. (Okay, so I’m an overly optimistic mom.) I should write an article about Children Who Cut Their Siblings’ Hair and the Mothers Who Love Them Anyway. But that’s entirely too talk-showish for me.

Last week, I zoomed down the stairs, trying desperately to get the girls to piano lessons on time for once. They were supposed to be putting their toys away and getting their shoes on while I finished getting ready to go. And it seemed they had been successful. I was all set to reward my children’s good behavior.

But my youngest looked a bit funny. It was her bangs–or lack thereof. Big sister had been at it again! This time, she claimed it was because Little Sister was “annoying.” If I cut off Big Sister’s hair every time she annoyed me, she’d be bald by now…but I digress.

I get so mad sometimes at the apparent lack of progress she makes. It seems like we keep circling around the same issues ad nauseum. Like this. I hadn’t been upstairs more than 15 minutes, and she’d managed to get irritated at Little Sister and shear her. WHEN will she learn to think before she acts?

I had to come up with a consequence that was out of the ordinary. Something innovative. Something that would hopefully shock her into never trying this again. Let the punishment fit the crime. An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth…

Hair for hair???

It was daring. She’d never expect me to do it. Let’s see…any family pictures coming up? No. Any big events? A piano contest, but we could work around that. Nope. No reason I could see to forebear.

I told her that since Little Sister would spend the rest of the summer being shaggy-looking, it was only fair for Big Sister to join her. I grabbed the scissors and a handful of Big Sister’s hair and started whacking. She started crying and wailing about how awful she would look. I reminded her that she didn’t think of that before giving Little Sister a trim.

The pile of dark brown hair on the table grew bigger. She protested, “You’re making me look WORSE than my sister!” I told her she deserved it. By the time I was done, her bangs were hacked, and so were the sides. I told her that if she decided to continue cutting her sister’s hair, I would continue cutting hers, even if it meant shaving it all off. I think I convinced her.

Truthfully, the pile of hair on the table made me want to cry. I love that girl so much that even her hairs are precious to me. But hair grows back, and I really didn’t cut off too much. It was a consequence that was fair and relatively painless. But it’s stuff like this that makes being a mom a really, really crappy job. Hope someday they appreciate it.

Anyway, in honor of my lack of hair styling aptitude, I have found the following products, should you wish to actually give your child a real hair cut:

Haircutting For Dummies
–this book claims to have great instructions as well as a sense of humor. I can sure use that!

AriusEickert Prisma titanium-coated shears–if my daughter had a pair of these, she wouldn’t be able to resist using them on everything! Fortunately, they’re way too expensive for us! But I thought they were rather pretty.

It’s weird…I have a haircutting scene in @Home For The Holidays that I wrote months ago. I’ll have to post some of it tomorrow. I hate it when my life imitates my art.

The How To Cut Your Child’s Hair…Badly by Violet Voices, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent .  Email This Post