Thursday, May 21, 2009

My Daughter's Special Gift


Today my daughter did a very good thing. I don't think she fully understands the gravity of her decision. She donated her hair!

Here's the deal: She's been begging me for like 2 months to get her hair cut short. I honestly didn't want her to do it. I think it is so pretty long and flowing... but I know that sensibly she can deal with it a lot better if there were less of it. She mainly wanted to not have so much to comb or brush. She rarely likes to wear it up or let me style it- so she really needs a simple 'down' do.

I told her we have to pick out a style she liked. That we did. She was very specific about certain things. No choppiness and she didn't want super short boy style and NO shaving! Well... her hair was SO thick that the lady had to put it in 2 pony tails to cut for the donation... And the way they were cut it just didn't lay right. So the very bottom of the back was a little shorter than she liked.

I knew as soon as I saw it that she wouldn't like it. It was not at all like the photo we picked out (which showed the BACK specifically with longer layers to the nape of the neck). So she cried all the way home. When we got home she ran as fast as she could to the house. And cried some more because the back wasn't right.

The neighbor kids were all knocking asking if she could play outside and everything. Of course she looked as adorable as can be!!

Here is a secret parents don't know about: every child knows that a parent (or step parent's or grown up) compliments don't really mean anything because parents have bad taste- my own memory flashes of my mom's bad taste in clothes and tid bits of outdated style kept popping into my head when I was trying to explain to her that her hair WAS cute and she just needed to get used to it.

Chopping 10 inches or more is quite a lot to get used to! She was worried that people were going to stare and I told her that even if she cut 2 inches or 20 inches people would look because it's different- so that is NORMAL. Then I illustrated my examples with my personal experiences... I know tactful boring mom style. For those of you that don't know I donated 15 inches last fall- and I seriously hated my hair cut at first, then I got used to it!

ANYWAY I went out and talked with the neighbor kids and they were all very polite and promised to be nice about it. They are such good kids- most of them.

That is when my wonderful husband had a wonderful idea- He invited Gwyn's friend Monica INSIDE. Of course he explained to Monica what was going on and within 30 seconds the thought of the "bad" hair was all diminished and Monica said she wanted Gwyneth's hair!

All in all things smoothed over pretty well... until tomorrow when they have to get ready for school! I guess we'll see. I offered to fluff her hair and even straighten her bangs like mine.

So about the donation- we talked about it (what it is for and WHY we should do it) and I told her if we cut it really short her hair is long enough that we should do it. When we were there she said she didn't want to, but I insisted we talked about it and the style we picked out was short enough we could donate. I told the stylist if she didn't think Gwyn had enough for the style then it was OKAY not to donate. She agreed we could do it with the style that Gwyn chose. I don't think Gwyneth really fully understands, but we can talk about it more later when the shock wears off. I think when it sinks in she'll appreciate that she did. So the style didn't exactly turn out the way she wanted, but I think once Gwyn gets used to it she'll forget all about how it wasn't perfectly like the photo.

Lesson: Sometimes doing a good thing is hard to do. In my opinion teaching your children young is vital!

No comments: