My daughter came home from school with her hair cut. 4 inches gone. She said she did it herself, but I know that kid, she loved her hair, brushed it a hundred times a night practically. I called her teacher, “I’m too busy for this. Buy her a wig and move on!” Went to the school myself the next day. Her classmate saw me in the hallway and just went red-eyed immediately. Said, “I know why she did it. Please don’t be mad at her.”
Turns out a girl in the other fourth grade class had started some serious treatment a few weeks back. You can imagine what kind of treatment, right? The kind that meant her hair was going to come out no matter what she did, and she’d been dreading walking into class looking different once it started happening for real. My daughter never said a word to me about any of this. Just decided on her own, cut her own hair short the night before with kitchen scissors, told everyone at school it was just “a change” so nobody made a thing of it.
I hadn’t heard one bit of this whole story from her. Found the other mom in the school parking lot that same afternoon, told her what happened, and she just started crying right there, said her daughter had been more scared of that part than anything else the doctors had already told her to expect. Now she wasn’t going to be the only one who looked different in that classroom.
Both girls showed up with matching short hair the following week, laughing about it like it was nothing. My daughter still hasn’t really explained herself to me directly. Guess she didn’t think she needed to. I think I raised a good kid who knows what friendship and kindness are.
