Parenting Cliche
The other day I found myself doing what I do every few hours in this new life, nursing the baby. I was snuggled up in my bed with little dude, happy as can be, when Lucy wandered in with a strange look on her face. She climbed into bed, refusing to look me in the eye, and buried her head underneath the blankets. I let her stay there until I heard her rip out a chunk of hair, as she tends to do when she gets nervous or bored. The hair twirling issue has been going on forever, so I went with my usual “Lu, let me see what you just did” speech. I felt around her hair and noticed a huge area was missing, but it wasn’t on the side she had been twirling. Upon further inspection, her hair was obviously cut, possibly with a hack saw. She basically looked like a member of Flock of Seagulls, which, as much as I love 80s bands, is not a look I want for my four year old.
It finally came out that while I was nursing, she got out her kid-safe scissors and decided to cut her hair to “make it even.” She did not succeed. And what followed was possibly one of my lowest parenting moments. I was so upset with her, for so many reasons (lying, disobeying rules, cutting her hair!) that I told her “I need to be alone, because I really can’t look at you right now.” Ouch, right? My thought was that I didn’t want to yell and scream and upset her, so I needed a moment to compose myself. Of course, she heard “Mommy is mad at me because I’m not pretty anymore.”
Ouch times a thousand.
Once I realized that was what she heard/thought, we immediately sat down to have a chat about beauty and what is “pretty” and how mom’s feel about their kids. I told her all the right things, she’s beautiful regardless of her looks, her intelligence, humor and kindness is what makes her beautiful, on and on, but she was still upset. When we went to get the amateur job fixed by a professional stylist, she was sad and kept telling me she wanted long, beautiful hair like me.
But since then, she has gone through what I think many people go through after a drastic physical change. She is liberated. She loves her short hair! She loves how quickly she can get ready in the morning and that she doesn’t have to wear pigtails every day. Her best friend at school has basically the same short cut, and they call each other hair twins. Of course there has been a nasty kid here and there that has told her she looks like a boy or that her new haircut is ugly, but she doesn’t seem to care. She just tells them she likes it and that is that.
I am not sure what I would have changed if I had this parenting moment to relive again…I mean, she disobeyed rules, so she had to be punished and I had a right to be upset. But I probably would have been kinder, emphasizing right off the bat the reason I was mad at her, so she wouldn’t bring up the beauty issue. But hell, I’m not perfect, and I guess I did the best I could. And the scissors (even kid-safe ones) are now in a permanent place WAY HIGH where no little fingers can get to them….
