There are many milestones children reach as they grow. The first tooth, first steps, first words, all endearing little goals that babies achieve at their own pace, often with a crowd of supporters cheering them on. As kids get older, it’s a first sleepover, a first day of school, a first goal scored and other celebratory milestones that memories are made of.
Not all common milestones are cause for celebration, however, such as that of the first self-administered haircut. Now, I try not to compare my dear offspring to one another. For the most part, they have achieved milestones at their own speed which is wonderful. I will note, however, that our older twin boys never did reach the milestone of cutting their own hair. They’ve enjoyed cutting and crafting and using scissors in regular supervised activities, however they have never turned their efforts towards themselves (or each other). So imagine my surprise when Little Sister grew very quiet one morning and instead of finding her, I discovered a trail of golden curls scattered throughout the house with a very scared looking girl at its end. “Sorry,” she whispered, barely audible.
It could have been much worse. What looked like an awful lot of hair didn’t really amount to much in the end. She took a little off the front, near her bangs, and added some creative layers at the very back of her head which are now developing into cowlicks that more or less can be tamed into a ponytail.
I certainly did a more thorough hack job on myself when I was her age and for a good while I was sporting what people consider now to be a trendy pixie cut. Back then, there was definitely nothing trendy about my coif, and I mostly just looked like a little boy with an obligatory pink barrette affixed to whatever hair I had remaining. Not satisfied with cutting my own hair, I cut my teddy bear’s fur too. Mid-cut, I realized this was a pretty poor decision and I was likely to get into trouble, so I did whatever any enterprising kid would do – I hid it under the couch cushion. All was well until my mother made this grisly-and-confusing discovery, at which point I had some explaining to do.
Our own sweet flaxen-haired little Edward Scissorhands also does not limit herself to just cutting her own hair. She has been hard at work cutting other things as she deems necessary. Feeling warm? That can easily be remedied by cutting numerous small holes in the front of a perfectly lovely shirt. Do you hate it when your washable marker doesn’t colour quite right? Why don’t you take matters into your own hands and trim it to a finer point with your brother’s little green scissors? Feeling snacky? Grab yourself a piece of bread and don’t worry about opening the bag, just cut the top right off of it, as close to the loaf as possible. It seems there is no problem in her life that can be solved with scissors.
Of course, one could argue that perhaps more careful supervision and removal of scissors may actually prevent her snipping stunts. That may be true, but I will point out that she has accomplished most of these tasks with child-friendly scissors that I can barely cut paper with.
Some kids collect rocks and other kids entertain themselves with paper. But when the going gets tough, our tough little gal goes straight for the scissors.
