The time has come for my most dreaded parenting task – that is to bring Little Edison to the barber shop.
Making him sit still for a few minutes to have his hair cut is a huge challenge. He is anxious whenever he is being confined in a hair-cutting apron. He hates it when the prickly pieces of hair fall on his neck and shoulder.
When he was younger, he would scream, cry and struggle until the whole hair-cutting episode was over. I wrote about our first experience HERE.
After a few rounds of haircut, the situation gets slightly better now. He still hates it, but he doesn’t struggle. We go to the same barber shop and choose the same hair stylist to attend to him. As he is more familiar with the environment now, he is more relaxed – lesser amount of turning and twisting.
We tried many attention diversion tactics to divert his attention from the haircutting process. From his favorite toys to mobile phone and TV, they don’t really help much. Recently, we found our ‘secret weapon’.
It’s a lollipop!
As he was happily eating his lollipop (a reward for sitting still), the hair stylist gave him the best haircut ever.
This is Little Edison – after a haircut and shower. I like his hair to be short and neat.
What about your kids? Do they hate haircut too?
In order to get shawn to “enjoy” his haircut, we went for expensive haircuts of $20 at those kiddy salons which entice him with BALLOON and a STICKER page. It works coz he wanted the stickers badly. Our strategy was to let him be used to cutting his hair with no fuss a few times so when he overcome the fear, we head for the barber.
Hi SY,
That’s a great idea. At least there is something that can attract Shawn to go for his haircut. Eventually, he will get used to his haircut routine.
We bring Edison to the $10 haircut at Okinawa Compass Pt. The lady stylist is quite child-friendly, she can handle kids quite well. Edison needs to overcome his fear of being confined in the hair-cutting apron and the sound of the electric shaver. Given two or three more visits, I think he should be able to settle down. =)
Mine just had his head shaved botak by his granddad haha cos I wanted to spare him the agony
Hi Irene,
Wow, you are brave! Hehe. That saves a lot of hassle, shampoo and water too.
Hi Emily,
Just share wf u..I cut my boys’ hair myself..just simple kind of triming..hehe..hair cut every 3 weeks…since they were 3 mths old..haha..can c how much I have saved..hehe..
Hi Radiant,
I cut Edison’s hair once when he was few months old. The outcome was horrible, I gave him a lousy haircut! Then, my MIL took over the role of cutting his hair. She did an excellent job. My hubby said that my MIL cut his hair until he went to primary school. She is very experienced.
However, at about two years old, we decided to bring him to the barber. Reason being his hair is too thick. It is difficult to cut using scissors. We don’t have electric shaver at home. So, we bring him to the barber every two months.
In between the two months, my MIL will do little trimming for him at home. His hair really grows very fast too.