Yep, that’s right, my husband and I let our five year old have blue hair. Quite the statement, which I never thought I would utter, until now.
Some of you may have already made up your mind that my husband and I are crazy. Maybe you’re wondering how we could possibly allow this with a five year old.
Others of you may be thinking we’re super chill parents who have colorful hair, piercings, and cool tattoos ourselves, and that we just want to let our children express themselves.
I can assure you we are not crazy, and we’re also definitely not cool enough to have our own hair dyed fun colors. I, in fact, have dyed my hair only a couple of times in my entire life. It was when I was in high school and my tennis teammates and I thought we were cool to dye just a streak of our hair orange for our state tournament. But that’s not the point.
The point is that sometimes we, as parents, make decisions that others do not understand, and we make them because we know our kids best.
My five year old has Cerebral Palsy and has recently had several EEGs (brain scans with a bunch of wires glued to her scalp). We discovered, through play therapy, that she has medical trauma associated with these EEGs. With such trauma related to her head and her hair, the act of brushing her hair before school has become a 30 minute wrestling match, for which I truly feel my Apple Watch should be giving me credit. I’ve tried every cute hairstyle, and she likes them, but it’s still a battle.
The trauma she has experienced at such a young age as well as the lack of control she must feel has led us here.
The EEGs, the three, sometimes more, appointments she has every week, the medicine cabinet full of prescriptions she has to take in the morning and at night–it’s kind of a lot for a kid who hasn’t even started kindergarten yet!
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I’ve described her schedule to friends as a full-time job before, and I don’t take her to every appointment. But you know who is at every appointment? My five year old. If it’s a full-time job for me to manage her schedule, it’s definitely a full-time job for her to participate in every appointment.
So where does that leave us, her parents, who just want to make sure that she can process her trauma, enjoy being a kid, and have some positive memories associated with her hair? Here. It leaves us here, helping our five year old, who has been telling us for weeks that she wants blue hair, to dye her hair blue.
I would have thought it was crazy, too. So I don’t blame you for thinking that initially if you did. But I do ask that when you see a parent doing something that you maybe wouldn’t do yourself, consider that they know their child best. They know what their child needs. They know how to care for their child even if it isn’t the same way that you care for yours.
And that’s why our five year old now has blue hair (with a little pink, too)!
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