Yesterday night I returned home to take a shower before meeting my husband and kids at my mother-in-law's house for dinner. When I entered our bathroom I couldn't help but noticed hunks of brown hair scattered across the bathroom floor, a newspaper, the counter top and even still lodged in a blue scissors.
Like Mama Bear returning home to find Goldilocks (wow, what an appropriate title!) having messed with her bowl, chair and bed... I realized that one of my three children must have been playing with a scissors. "Who's been using my shears to cut their own hair?" I wondered aloud.
For a split second, it crossed my mind that I might be assuming too much about their capacity for criminal behavior. After all, my husband technically *could* have decided to give one of them a haircut. I couldn't tell whose hair it was, since all three kids have identically colored (mouse brown) hair.
Reaching for the phone, I dialed my hubby (now at his mom's) and said,
"Babe, have you by any chance been cutting someone's hair?"
A long, slow chuckle greeted me on the other end of the line.
"Uh... no. THAT would be our son. Who now resembles Frankenstein."
"Which one?"
"The oldest."
"When did he manage to do that? His hair was fine when I left an hour ago."
"He did it during the five minutes or less when I was dressing his brother and sister after their bath."
"Wow, there's a lot of hair on the ground here."
"Yes. I have to say, it was very hard not to laugh when I saw him. Hard to keep a straight face. But I did tell him that you and I would think of an appropriate consequence, so he knows that he is in trouble."
"So how bad is it?"
"It's bad."
Getting off of the phone, I reflected upon our history with self-given haircuts. This must be genetic, because my own mother's worst memory of my toddlerhood is that of me wandering into her room missing a third of the hair on my head because I had given myself a haircut with her sharpest sewing scissors. Right before school picture day. I'm not sure how old I was at the time, but probably right around his age - five.
Unfortunately this isn't the first time our son has cut his own hair, in fact the last time he did it over a year ago he also cut his younger brother's hair - with their daddy's nail scissors. This was a big deal in our family at the time, since he could have seriously injured himself AND his brother. My husband and I each talked with him at length about why we visit a trained professional to get our hair cut. So we can't use the argument about how he "didn't know better" any more. He definitely knows better.
Not having an easy scapegoat (like innocence) to blame things on forces us to look deeper as parents at the WHY instead of just the WHAT.
WHY is a tougher question to answer.
WHY did our son make a choice that he actively knew was wrong, and which he knew would disfigure himself?
My mother says she thinks he was looking for attention.
I'm not so sure. Actually, she may be right. He may be looking for attention - but not in the way she means. He isn't seeking attention from us.
I think all of this has to do with Beth. If you scan back a few posts to the Goodbye Gift, you will remember that a few weeks ago this same son's best friend Beth moved home to her native Australia. They had been extremely close friends, especially during the past school year.
She moved away the exact day that their school vacation began for the holidays, so my son didn't really notice her absence until he returned to school this week.
However on that very first Monday afternoon when he got into the car in the afternoon, we could tell something was wrong.
"How was school today, buddy?"
"Not good."
"Really? Why?"
"I don't like it there."
"Why honey? What happened?"
"Nobody wants to be my friend."
"I'm sure that isn't true. There are lots of other kids that would want to be your friend."
"No, there aren't."
This is the part where tears come to my eyes as I type... because I don't know whether he is simply full of self-pity or if he is right.
My kid *is* a loner. I've mentioned this before. His teachers consistently bring it up. He beats to his own drum. He doesn't have a ton of friends, mostly out of his own shyness and choice to keep to himself.
So, I don't know if there are really a bunch of kids in his class that would like to play with him. I hope there are, but what if there aren't?
Every day this week I have casually asked him how the day went, what he did, who he played with. I've asked him off-handedly while doing other things like playing with toys, drawing together, giving him a bath.
Every time, he has answered that he played by himself.
Once I asked him who he would like to make friends with, and he listed the names of half of the kids in his class. So, it isn't that he doesn't want to be close to other kids. It's that he doesn't know how. The boy has many innate gifts and abilities but social intelligence is not one of them yet.
So, where does the haircut fit into all of this?
I have the feeling that our son believed that cutting his own hair would make him look cool to the kids at school... that he might make some friends out of it. Last night he kept telling his father, "I look good! My hair looks good!" When we threatened to shave it off before school started today, he began to sob.
Is his haircut then, a cry of loneliness? A cry for help, or for friendship? It's a lot to think about. Are we doing enough as his parents to help him build his social skills, and to support his nascent friendships when they do bud?
I told our son that no matter why he made the choice to steal my scissors and cut his own hair, there will be a carefully thought-out consequence. As Gilbert and Sullivan say, "Let the punishment fit the crime"... so I came up with this:
We will take him to the salon to have his hair fixed this weekend and he will then pay for the new haircut out of his piggy bank... which will pretty much drain his account. That way, in the future if he ever feels tempted to cut his own hair (or the hair of his sister or brother) again he will know that in the end he will end up ($literally$) paying for it.
After we discussed the consequence last night at bedtime, I gave my boy a big hug and asked him if he is still feeling sad about Beth leaving. He nodded with watery eyes and asked if she was ever coming back. It was hard to tell him the truth, "I don't think so, buddy."
We agreed that this week he would work on writing her a letter and drawing a picture.
"I'm going to write her TEN LETTERS", he grinned. "I'm going to draw her TEN PICTURES." He fell asleep clutching a book in one hand and a bear in the other.
I couldn't help but think as I closed his door how young he is to be experiencing isolation, loneliness, loss and heartache. As adults we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking that children's emotions and friendships (or lack thereof) don't matter yet... but we're wrong. Any kid can tell you, these things matter.
Poor little shorn sheep. We love you, buddy.
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