Buzz cut for the boy

William has always had a hair fixation, since the first minute he could control his hands. As soon as he could put them where he wanted them, they were in my hair. Then when he started growing hair, they were in his too although evidently it was a little too thin and fine for his taste, since my hair was still the preferred choice. When Will was a few months old, he actually started pulling his hair out on one side for a while. We bought him a Barbie, which he loved and carried around everywhere for a while, much to Chris’s dismay. She’s now this naked doll (we did manage to keep clothes on her for a bit) with dreadlocks that stand literally straight up—but he loved that silky blond Barbie hair while it lasted. And she did help him stop pulling out his hair, which grew back eventually.

He still twirls his hair around his fingers—his favorite spot is the crown of his head for some reason—but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, though, that he started pulling it again. I have to say that this really freaks me out. I had this friend in seventh grade who pulled her hair out—she had emotional problems—and her hair never grew back right. And my first thought when Will was little was what kind of terrible mother was I that my little only-months-old baby was so stressed that he was—well, not exactly mutilating himself, but that’s what it feels like when you’re watching your own child do something like that. His daycare has had some staff changes lately, which I think I’ve talked about here before (I have got to find some better blogging software so I can figure out how to index old posts, by kid or something), and he has a very strong preference for one teacher over the other, and so I wonder if it’s got something to do with that now. I don’t know. All I do know is that I told my little three year old that if he didn’t stop pulling his hair out, I would cut it all off.

Well, of course he didn’t stop. He has this little monk’s tonsure at the crown of his head—a clean ring all around a little tuft of short hair in the middle. I did warn him several times. I got out his old Barbie and his fuzzy lion and all his hairy animals (and he has many, many hairy animals). And then last weekend Chris and I buzz cut off all his hair.

For the last couple of years Chris has been having me cut his hair, something I resisted very strongly at first because you can always gripe about your haircut when it’s not your wife who does it, you know? He bought one of those electric razors with the different attachments so your hair can be luxuriously long at 3/4 of an inch, or you can have more of a military precision cut with the 1/4 trimmer. We compromised on Will at a 1/2 inch. Chris started out while I was holding him, and then when Will got wiggly, I took a turn with him still on my lap (and I had to sing five little ducks about a million times during it—Jacob duck when outside to play, Blake duck, Peyton duck, all his friends at school. You know the lyrics? “Five little ducks went out to play, over the hills and far away. When the mother duck said quack quack quack quack, only four little ducks came back” What is this fascination kids have with people going away and not coming back? And is this related? He learned that song around the time the hair pulling started.).

We ended up with a soft fuzzy headed boy. I must have missed one tiny tuft of hair that’s a little longer than that rest—that’s all he has to hold onto. Luckily I had his three-year-old pictures taken just before all this started, because he looks like we’re about to ship him off to military school (although he’s a very cute little cadet). Fortunately he’s handled it better than I hoped, and in just a week, his bald spot (ring?) has already started to grow back. This is one of those things I imagine us telling him about at the family reunion when he’s brought his new wife for the first time, you know? Hopefully by then it’ll just be a funny story and not another indication that he inherited his mother’s obsessive compulsive tendencies.