A couple of weeks ago at community group, one of my friends was lamenting over her daughter's new self-haircut. Ironically enough, to this point, we had not had the self-haircutting experience, which had left me to believe that perhaps this preschool right of passage was only something that girls decided to do. So, being the awesome mom and friend that I am, I chimed into the conversation that no scissor wielding experience had ever happened in our home with our boys, as odd as this may have seemed to everyone else (seeing how my boys tend to prefer to walk on the wild side and embrace danger as if it was their best friend).
I'm fairly certain that when the words "that has never happened with my boys" stumbled out of my mouth, that God Himself made a mental note of my proclamation, while simultaneously chuckling loudly.
Because fast forward two weeks, and this is where we stand.
I had just gotten home from
our weekend away. Brayden came to me with "the look" on his face. Brayden is very much my child in that the kid cannot tell a lie for the life of him. This is a good thing, especially for me as a parent, as I'm generally able to tell right off the bat if we are about to enter into a situation of "can mommy figure out what's wrong". So I see the face, and then I see the hair. And instead of saying anything, I let him do the talking, which went something like
"well, Mamaw was with Tyler and we went in your bathroom, and Connor broke daddy's razor, but I used daddy's razor and, well... my hair."
I had always wondered how I would respond in situations like this, and here's what I will tell you. In about 3 seconds, you go from vanity, anger and pity. I was leaning more on the anger/pity side of things during those first 5 seconds of reaction. I'm not a person who puts a whole lot into looks, and since we all know hair will grow back, this was the least of my worries. Anger because, well, this is obvious. And pity because there was no discipline needed. His face said everything I needed to know.
He was deeply heart broken that his decision had caused something that was irreversible (at least for a few weeks anyway). He cried for nearly an hour, and after talking with him for quite a while, I realized that he thought that his hair was permanently damaged. Bless his sweet little heart. When we finally looked on Google for a few buzz cuts and he realized that things would eventually go back to normal, I was able to get him to calm down. He even humored me with a half hearted smile (which I had to really coax him into doing; just because he's OK with the fact that things will grow back does not remove the self consciousness I can tell he has about everything). We were able to get into a hair salon fairly quickly, and remedy the situation as best we could: with a level 1 buzz.
(he really doesn't look half bad with a short buzz cut, although I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that we're both ready for it to be long enough to spike it again ;) ).
Overall, I think this has been a good lesson for both of us. For B, it was the lesson that when Drew and I put boundaries in place, they are for his good and to protect him. There's also the lesson of natural consequences. In this instance, we didn't have to discipline; the result of getting into the razor alone was punishment enough. For me, I learned something I never really had thought about before: it is so hard watching your child go through something that they brought upon themselves as a result of disobeying your rules. There was nothing I could do to make the natural consequence go away. I could try to make it a little better, but even then, it meant losing the rest of his hair too. My mommy heart ached so badly for a way to just take it all away from him, but I couldn't. I could only console him. I'm sure this isn't the last time that our boundaries will be tested; the real question is if the consequences will be just as easy of a fix as a buzz cut ;)
