When I was 8, my mom said I could only go to sleepaway camp if I cut my hair short. Otherwise, she said, I wouldn’t brush it and I’d come home with a rat’s nest. So, under protest, my hair was chopped off, and thus began what my brother still calls “the boy years.” It was probably more like months than years, but when people mistake you for a boy even when you’re wearing a skirt, it feels like forever. (Not that I’m holding a grudge.)
So I really feel for the 10-year-old pictured below, whose mom supposedly shaved her head because, as the mom wrote on Facebook, “she wouldn’t brush [her hair] and I told her it was going to happen next time she ended up with a rats nest.” (My mom, I should clarify, just gave me a short cut — more like Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap than full-on bald — and she certainly didn’t publicly humiliate me, since she still thinks the ‘do was adorable.)
The daughter in this case, as evidenced by the photo, was clearly not pleased with her new look, and responses to the photo—which wasposted to Reddit after a user saw it on Facebook—have been largely negative. The post has received more than 130 comments on Reddit, most of which are critical of this mother’s decision both to shave her daughter’s head and publicly shame her online. “Seriously, there’s no chance she’s ever going to forget her mother doing this, or the grief it’ll cause in her life when other kids harass her,” writes Redditor NeonDisease. “I feel so terrible for her,” says kaitlin415.
“We don’t know what measures the mother put in place until this point—though I can’t imagine what measures would justify this course of action,” says Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and author of If I Have To Tell You One More Time. “Shaving her daughter’s head does nothing to solve the problem they were having, which was that she didn’t want to brush her hair. Instead of digging into why she didn’t like to brush, or coming up with a solution or making it part of a routine, she resorted to shaving the child’s head. In my mind, it was a cruel and arbitrary way to handle it.”
Posting the photo on Facebook, McCready says, is tantamount to parental bullying. “We would be outraged if one of her friends took a picture like this and posted it online,” McCready says. “Public shaming completely erodes the trust between mom and daughter. Instead, it reinforces conflict and says ‘we are on opposite teams.’”
This method of punishment – public humiliation on social media—is becoming more popular, and McCready says it is dangerous for a child’s development. “The child experiences intense humiliation and the learning opportunity is lost. Now, she’s only focused on the embarrassment and anger instead of learning how to do better in the future,” she says. “Plus, we want kids to make decisions based on their moral compass and what they believe is right and wrong, not based on fear that their parents are going to out them and air their dirty laundry online.”
In this case, the mother could have tried a number of other solutions, McCready says. A new hairbrush or detangler or a new conditioner. She could have tried making hair brushing part of the daily routine, or tried what McCready calls a “when-then” routine. “That’s saying, every morningwhen you are dressed and your bed is made and your hair is combed,then you can watch some TV or play for 15 minutes. When the yucky stuff is done, then you can do something fun,” McCready suggests. “Even if you are at your last resort, focus on solving problems in a respectful way — and keeping it private — so the child knows you have her best interest at heart.”
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