This year my children have discovered scissors in a big way. And I know from experience that scissors, in the hands of a small child, and hair are not a good combination.
The first haircut of note was not noticed until the morning after it had occurred when my four year old daughter woke for the day. At first I thought her hair was sitting a bit funny, making it look as though she had a fringe. But as she climbed up to the breakfast bar I observed the tell-tale marks of scissors.
I asked her father if he noticed anything different above Miss 4’s hair to which he inquired, ‘Why? Doesn’t she have a fringe?’
Under grilling from both parents Miss 4 admitted cutting her hair. It seems that the previous night after I had cut hubby’s hair she had gone into the bathroom while her father was having a shower, grabbed a section of the hair around her face and cut it to just above her eyebrows. The effect was actually quite good and only took a few small snips on my part to even the whole thing out. Regardless, we had a stern discussion about using scissors unsupervised and especially on hair.
So now she had a fringe which was widely complimented. Needless to say that my sanguine Miss 4 loved all of the attention.
Then we had a break for a while until Master 6 came home from school with a few chunks of hair missing from behind his ears. After a short discussion I discovered that almost the whole of his Kindergarten class were experimenting with hair cutting and the girl who sat next to him had trimmed his. A conversation ensued about letting other children cut your hair.
Then, perhaps a month after this incident I again noticed Master 6 had an interesting detail in his hair and this time, he owned up to it.
Okay, I thought, this time we sat down and undertook the hair cutting talk again.
And then there was respite and I had all but forgotten about our hair incidents. How I revelled in it!
Then, one afternoon, as I was getting dinner ready and preparing to leave for a function (childless!) once my husband came home from work I returned to the kitchen to find Master 6 standing above Miss 4 on the floor or our dining room, partially obscured behind our vertical blinds, pigtail in one hand and scissors in the other.
What followed was a shriek of horror (mine) and some quick fire questions to which I was able to ascertain that not only had Miss 4 allowed Master 6 to cut her hair, she had asked him to do it. By the time I got to her she was missing a chunk of her fringe and about four inches from one pigtail.
I did my best, in a frenzied state because I was now late for my function which I thankfully arrived at as the official part had just begin, but the result reminded hubby and I of Scout from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. When recounting the most recent haircut adventure to one of my sisters in law she commented, ‘it just gets worse!’
Yeah, it really does. But fingers crossed we’ve hit that point where we’ve experimented enough with dreams of hairdressing. Miss 4 continues unperturbed with her haircut and we are left instituting draconian rules regarding scissors because frankly, four haircuts in one year is more than just a little ridiculous…
Originally posted 2014-12-29 22:57:06.