I have cut everybody's hair in our family, but I always made a mess of the boys. It's impossible trying to trim a moving target - the feel of the wisps of hair as they fall (and this can't be avoided when trimming the fringe) would make them flinch, the scissors would slip and the fringe would end up crooked.
With difficult child 1, I was eventually able to trim him acceptably, then I bought a new pair of hair clippers. I buzz cut his hair and it looked great. It was the last time his hair was cut, for five years.
difficult child 1 likes animé and goes to every convention he can, usually in costume. He also goes to the sci-fi/fantasy conventions, also in costume. And a lot of the characters he likes have long hair.
The real fun began when he wanted to dress up as an animé character with blue hair - and it had to be just the right shade of blue. To do this, he had to bleach his hair - or rather, I did. He complained the whole time that it was burning his scalp - it was, too - and swore like a trooper. He put up with it, though, because he needed bleached hair for the blue dye to look blue, and not muddy brown. It looked fairly awful but we planned a buzz cut after the convention, which would have looked interesting as it grew out, with bleached tips and darker roots.
In the end his hair was so brassy, it looked fairly terrible, so we put the blue in as soon as we could.
You know what happens when you put blue over yellow? It was a lovely emerald green... and what it did to the sheets! I consoled myself that if it was coming out of his hair so easily, it would eventually come out of the sheets with the same number of washes.
But he didn't let me cut it afterwards. He ended up with two-tone hair, which he has finally allowed me to trim off. His hair is almost waist-length but he wears it tied back just about all the time. When he goes to sci-fi conventions, he wears a Star Wars Jedi outfit he had made in black, goes as a Sith, complete with professional-looking light saber. He's 23, still lives like a kid with all the leisure in the world, even though he's looking for a job.
difficult child 3 - I finally gave up, we take him to the same budget hairdresser I now see. And they do a great job. I figured a mob that specialises in cutting hair cheaply, should be experienced in trimming difficult kids. It took some cajoling to begin with, but they do often behave better for a stranger.
We buzz-cut difficult child 3's hair five years ago because he had ticks all through his scalp (everywhere else too). We needed him scalped so we could find the bloodsuckers. And he looked awful - he picks at scabs and is really skinny so he looked like a concentration camp inmate.
Somewhere we have a photo of difficult child 1 getting his hair cut - I meant to dig it out for his 21st.
Here's a word of advice - always make sure you have a store of such photos and hide the negatives, they make really good blackmail material.
Marg
