Another post about HAIR!
But it’s not about MY hair this time. Oh don’t worry, I’m sure there will be many more posts written about my hair over the life of this blog.
So, let’s talk about The Toddler Mullet (TTM). Maddie is sporting a serious case of TTM and I’m not sure what to do about it. My original plan was to let her hair grow long. I had visions of pigtails and french braids dancing in my head the minute I knew I was pregnant with a girl. Unfortunately, Maddie was a baldy. She only really got hair around her first birthday. It’s long enough now that I can put some cute tiny pigtails on her, but she hates them. She hates anything in her hair or having anything done to it.
I figure I could keep trying and eventually she might accept a hairdo, or I could just go with the flow and give up the long hair idea. A little girl with a bob is adorable, after all. If I go with the shorter ‘do, then it’s time to get rid of TTM. How old were your kids when you got their hair cut for the first time? Did you take them to a kid’s salon or do it yourself? Was it traumatic for anyone involved? SPILL! I need details, people.
Filed under: baby on May 18th, 2008
Long hair. Love long hair on little girls but you know I’m a traditionalist so I’m sure you’re not surprised. *grins* I dealt with Lucy’s hair by giving her bangs myself until she was old enough to understand the hair thing and then we those out too.
LD still hasn’t had a haircut. She hates having anything done with her hair, mainly I think because it’s severly naturally curly and it gets tangled. I’ve gone to using Matrix stuff on her in the bath, which has helped. Also in the help corner: letting her brush her own hair as well as mine. I think the whole “doing the hair” thing is more a control issue than anything. So with this new “you do it first” aspect, she’s been more willing…
We went all the way to 2 1/2 before the first haircut–Mimi was a baldy too. The only thing we did was trim the rat tail in the back when she was about 1 1/2, but I don’t count that as an official haircut.
J was born with pretty long hair, particularly on top. Then she did that rub the hair off the sides and back thing that babies do, so she had this long shock of hair on top and not much on the sides. She escaped TTM though, because as the hair grew in the sides and back, it was curly, so the top hair (which is wavy, but not curly like the back) quickly caught up in length. Our dilemma was to cut bangs or not, because there was a time when she wouldn’t leave anything in here hair to hold it back out of her face. So far, she has not had a haircut. We’re battling the in her face thing daily, but she’s getting better about barrettes, so we may still wait a while before she gets a cut.
My other kids, I just cut bangs when they needed (around 18 months to 2 years old) it until they were old enough to sit still at a salon (and when I say salon, I mean like Hair Cuttery or Supercuts). It was never traumatic, though the first time my oldest got her long locks cut off into a bob, she suddenly looked so much older it was shocking.
TTM is a rough thing to deal with. I would go the way of the bob myself, I think, if faced with this dilemma. We have yet to cut Addy’s hair at all- it grew in pretty evenly, and never rubbed out in any weird spots the way Eli’s did. However, it’s starting to extremely long and kind of wild and unruly. We call her the lionness.
I trim the kids’ hair myself, and I do it when the level of nuts I’m being driven surpasses the level of worry I have about screwing it up. With the boys, it’s pretty easy to run clippers over their heads. Elizabeth has been a whole new world for me. At first I wasn’t going to cut bangs (who wants to have to keep trimming them?), but she hated barrettes and her hair is so thin it doesn’t hold barrettes and elastics very well anyway, so her hair was always in her face. Finally I cut her some bangs—and now I’m leaving them because I think they suit the shape of her face. (But they ARE a pain to have to trim every month, and I almost always cut them too short.) The rest of her hair I keep trimming because her hair gets tangled into big nests (she’s a restless sleeper and a hair-twirler), and picking out the nests tends to gradually break the hair so the ends look wispier and wispier until trimming them actually makes her hair look longer and thicker.
In short: SIGH.
Don’t ask ME what to do. My kid has the same thing. I DO want to grow it a LITTLE bit longer, so for now, I do either the front ponytail “fountain” thing or a barrette to keep it out of her face. She doesn’t like it either but will usually forget about it if I distract her right after.
This was one thing I was happy to learn after having a boy. Cutting boys hair is easy. I’ve been cutting Matt’s hair for years, and now I just cut Zachariah’s myself too. I had his cut the first time at 10 months. I let my aunt (a former stylist) trim it a little for me. Ever since I do it myself. He’s had probably 5 haircuts in his 2 years. And I’m ready to cut it again. I’m contemplating buzzing it for summer.
As far as girls go, I would go for the bob in our situation. I think that is cute on little girls too. If you think you can do it yourself, I’d say go ahead. I just had to learn to take Zachariah’s a little at a time. I would trim trim trim, then let him squirm around a bit. Or I give him a lollipop or something like that to entertain him while I’m trimming. Good luck.
O’s hair grew fast so we actually had it cut when he was around a year. Plus he’s a boy and I love short hair on little boys. We went to Cool Cuts because they had the chairs that looked like trains and cars thinking it would make it more fun/less traumatic and they had a little package where they take a polaroid and save a lock for you. In hindsight it was dumb - all we needed was our own camera, a ziploc bag and a sucker and he would have been in heaven. but it wasn’t expensive and it was fun and the pictures are cute