Haircuts

Alyssa and Joel have an appointment with Ms. Sharon on Tuesday to have their hair cut, but evidently Alyssa thought that they needed them asap. As in tonight. So she took matters into her own hands. I don't think she cut anything but her bangs and Joel's bangs; thankfully I didn't see any place that looked like she had cut her sides/back.

I know its basically a rite of passage for a kid and that almost everyone has done it/will do it, but I didn't realize how stressful it would be on me as a parent. I wonder now if we punished her appropriately, if I handled the situation correctly (or to the best of my ability), etc. As I was putting her to bed she told me that she didn't want to go to preschool or swimming lessons tomorrow, so I think she's embarrassed by what she did. Which on one hand I'm glad that she realizes that she did something wrong and realizes that there are consequences to her actions and I hope that she's just embarrassed because she did something wrong, not because she looks silly. Because that's not a pressure that I want my 4 year old to feel.

It makes me sad to have to punish her because this went beyond the "naughty corner" in our (or at least my) parenting book and I'm not used to dealing with those situations. She didn't seem overly upset by her punishment (straight to bed about 40 minutes early, no books/cuddle time with mommy), so I feel like maybe it fit the "crime" because I think she knew better than to argue. I keep telling myself that if I were being *too* hard on her there would have been a lot more tears and carrying on rather than just acceptance.

She did ask me why Joel was getting to watch "Olivia" all by himself because "his hair is short, too!". I told her that he didn't cut his own hair, or his little brother's hair, for that matter and she muttered "I shouldn't have cut Joel's hair" before rolling over and going to sleep. I wonder if I would have reacted that same way if she would have just cut her own hair.