We're Back to Magical Hair Cuts

Micah asked to have his hair cut last evening. I want to point out that it was 10:00 pm, we just got home from the grandparents' house, and he was overdue for sleep. This, of course, means that he was looking for any excuse to get out of going to bed that he could.

This request for a haircut was accompanied by a photo, which made it worse, because he wasn't just trying to get out of bed, he also had something specific in mind. When Micah has something specific in mind, he doesn't let go of that idea until he sees it come to reality.

He showed us a saved photo of Willy Wonka.

This is a problem.

Micah's last hair cut was a request to look like Woody, who is pretty much shaved bald. That was just 3 months ago. While my kids possess super powers of growing hair, super powers don't produce miraculous results; just great results.

We managed to wrestle the boy to bed and avoid the hair cutting topic for the evening, but we also knew that he wouldn't forget because that boy doesn't ever forget anything. (Except, on occasion, where he placed Woody or his iPad.)

Sure enough, first thing this morning, he asked for a hair cut, and showed me the photo of Willy Wonka's long and glorious mane.

Nuts.

Micah doesn't grasp concepts that are not concrete. He's working on it, but it's a struggle. To say that clippers don't make hair longer is not something he knows. He just knows that clippers fix your hair when you want it fixed, because that's been his experience. I attempted anyway, because it's what you do as a human. You keep trying.

"Micah, I can't make your hair longer. I can only make it shorter. Cutting your hair (accompanied with fingers pretending to scissor through my hair) makes it smaller (with fingers pretending to measure something small), not bigger (with fingers pretending to measure something large)."

Micah thought for a while, and turned to his iPad. I may or may not have gotten through, but the fact that he stopped requesting a Willy Wonka "cut" was good, at least.

I went about my morning chores, while Micah played with his iPad. I was thinking that I kind of won an easy battle in the face of what looked like a 3-week war, when he showed me a new photo.

Shrek! (Accompanied by Micah's fingers making the cutting motion in his hair.)

WELL THEN.

I mean, I can definitely do that hair cut. Kind of. I'm not going to razor him because my history with hair and scissors would inevitably end up with many nicks and deep cuts on his scalp, which would have him covered in band aids, which he hates and won't wear, and he'd bleed and scab over and look awful and I'd be turned over to Child Welfare Services and have my kids, and probably even the dogs, confiscated, and all my scissors taken, and then I couldn't sew anymore because I wouldn't have scissors, and I'd be penniless because I wouldn't' have a job, nor would I have kids or dogs, and my life would be so awful.

Yeh, I'm not shaving my son's head to look like Shrek. I stand a lot to lose.

But on the bright side, Micah won a major victory today in the Understanding Concepts category. I was able to make him understand that I can't make hair longer, and he was able to correlate that to long hair vs short hair, and make appropriate decisions with this new information.

My mama heart is bursting with pride, even if my kid will be basically bald by the end of the day. It's just hair, after all. Hair grows back, but understanding is a lifelong accomplishment.