My boy loves his hair. He's had 4 haircuts in his life. His hair grows really fast. I always let it grow pretty long and then took it pretty short, down on the sides with a bit longer on the top, like my husband's hair. I took some classes when I was younger and I'm pretty good at cutting hair. I cut my husband's hair and my son's hair. My daughter (3) has never had a haircut because she loves her long hair. I used to cut my mom's hair, siblings' hair, and some old friends' hair. Male and female. I can't do anything too intricate, but I'm good enough.Anyway, my boy loves his hair. It's grown out quite a lot. It's a darker golden blonde and slightly curly. It's beautiful. Super cute. Fits his appearance and personality. So soft, he loves for me to play with it until he falls asleep. Personally, I love it. It's my bushy headed little boy's hair.Problem is it's now getting in his eyes a bit and he has to move it sometimes when he's doing activities. Another problem is he picked up on my hair twirling. I have hair just like him, in color and texture, down to just above my belly button. I twirl my hair a lot. My mom twirled her hair and now I do, too. It's comforting, soft to touch, something to do with my hands when I'm sitting, riding passenger in a car, or watching television. I love my hair, it's important to me. I cut my hair into a faux hawk my senior year of high school and immediately regretted it. Haven't cut it ever since. So I know how special hair can be to a person.Now, the hair twirling. He does it when he's relaxing. But he also does it when he gets nervous or anxious. He's coming into his own socially, but sometimes when he gets nervous introducing himself to new kids at parks or community centers he'll immediately twirl his hair. He focuses on that and not on interacting with others. It's like touching his hair increases his anxiety. He plays wonderfully with others, quite the social butterfly most of the time, but if he joins an existing group playing at the playground or at a community center, he can get nervous, and then it's immediately to the hair twirling. He'll twirl it and refuse to talk, walk away and look sad. When his hair is short, he never does this.My husband loves our son's hair, but he thinks it's a bigger problem than it is a good thing. He keeps asking me to cut our son's hair. I ask my son if he wants a haircut. I've asked several times the past couple of weeks. He says, "No! I like my hair. I don't want a haircut!" So, I don't cut it. I believe he is old enough to make autonomous decisions about his own preferences for himself. He does it with everything else, like picking out clothes to buy, dressing himself, picking out food to buy and to eat, picking out gifts, deciding on learning activities to a reasonable extent (I'm a SAHM, I homeschool my kids), deciding on play activities, etc. He's quite independent, adventurous, curious, wonderfully smart. I love my boy. And I want him to feel respected in his choices, valued as an autonomous person, and understand consent when it comes to his own body and others.I asked my mother, who raised 4 kids, and she doesn't think he should have a say in getting a haircut. She says he is too young to decide something like that and he shouldn't have a choice in it, "no ifs, ands, or buts." I love my mother, she was an awesome parent, but I remember having a lot of autonomy and independence as a child. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I always thought it was a positive part of growing up that she let myself and my siblings decide things on our own and learn from our actions and their potential results and consequences.We were at a park yesterday and my son was playing wonderfully with another mom's little girl. We got to talking and she commented that my son had such beautiful hair. She said she wishes her son would keep his hair long, but prefers it short. I asked her which one was her son and she pointed him out, says he just turned 6. This kid had a buzz cut. I know kids grow like weeds, but 4.5 isn't that far from 6. If a 6 year old can prefer his hair short, can't a 4.5 year old prefer his hair long?I don't have any friends really, just occasional mom meet ups for park dates, so I don't know where else to get input from. Should a 4.5 year old have a say in getting a haircut? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3dAwWLy
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