Why One Mom Let Her 6-Year-Old Daughter Shave Her Head
Six-year-old Aellyn was thrilled with her new buzz cut, but mom Paige Lucas-Stannard hesitated before letting it happen. (Photo: Paige Lucas-Stannard)
When Paige Lucas-Stannard’s 6-year-old daughter, Aellyn, asked her mom if she could have her head shaved, she didn’t know how to react.
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The request was innocent enough — Aellyn’s dad regularly shaved his head, and one of her younger twin brothers, Boston, decided he wanted his dad to shave his, too. After her dad buzzed Boston’s hair off, Aellyn wanted in on the fun.
“I said yes, but we couldn’t do it at that exact time, so I was hoping she would forget about it,” Lucas-Stannard tells Yahoo Parenting. But Aellyn didn’t forget. And her mother, author of Gender Neutral Parenting and a lifelong fighter of gender stereotypes, found herself hesitating, and it forced her to question why.
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“I’ve overcome much of the ‘laws of femininity’ that society tried so hard to force on me,” she wrote on her blog, Baby Dust Diaries. “I’ve had many a pixie cut and just last year I buzzed my hair with a 1-inch setting. And yet my deep, gut feeling about my daughter shaving her head sounded something like this: ‘DEAR GOD NOOOOOOOO!’”
Aellyn at home, halfway to buzzcut! (Photo: Paige Lucas-Stannard)
Aellyn, for her part, couldn’t see what the big deal was, says Lucas-Stannard, who realized she was stalling simply because she loved her daughter’s hair and didn’t want her to get rid of it.
“I really wanted to talk her out of it,” she says. “I explained to her all the downsides, that kids might tease her because girls usually have hair, and that she might regret it, but it won’t grow back long until Christmas. She kept saying she still wanted to do it.”
Ultimately, Lucas-Stannard decided it wasn’t right for her to object. “I didn’t want to send her the message that she didn’t control her body, that how she looked was up to other people and the larger culture,” she says.
Aellyn’s dad went ahead and shaved her head, and the 6-year-old was totally thrilled with no regrets, says Lucas-Stannard, who notes she learned a big lesson about letting her daughter make her own decisions about how she wants to express herself.
It’s something all parents confront, and how to handle it depends a lot on a child’s personality, experts say.
“If you have a child who is determined to dress in a certain way or get a certain haircut, it’s important to know how your child is likely to deal with consequences,” Amy Morin, a psychotherapist in New York City and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, tells Yahoo Parenting. “A sensitive child may regret her decision if she’s teased by her peers, so you need to prepare your child for the responses she may receive.”
An impulsive kid who changes her mind every two minutes may regret making a bold change to her appearance. “But if you have a child who has had her heart set on making a change, it may make sense to let her do it,” says Morin.
“If you’re not certain if you want to allow your child to make a bold change, take things slowly. Let her make a minor change and see how that goes before committing to a bold change,” she adds.
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