Carson will tell anyone who asks that I love to torture him. Torture takes on various forms. A couple of my favorites and his least favorites are picking his zits and cutting his hair.
Since he’s a middle-schooler now, he has a few blackheads on his nose and chin. They aren’t really bad, but I always know that I can make them go away. Although my medication helps with most aspects of my OCD, this is one area that is not exactly under control. I become obsessed with squeezing them and making them go away, obsessed to the point that I HAVE TO do it. I even bought a tool recently to help in my endeavor!!! Carson calls it a “torture tool!”
My other torture tool is a pair of scissors. I’ve always cut my kids’ hair. (I’ve also whacked on my own a few times too many!) Finally, my lack of training has caught up with me. Last night, I trimmed Carson’s hair and left him with a very bushy, shorter bowl cut. I kept thinking that it wasn’t as bad I was imagining. Well, I was wrong! It was bad! When my precious love got home from school today, I mentioned that we should go to a professional to have his hair trimmed. I told him that we wouldn’t go any shorter, but that I thought it needed to be layered and shaped up a bit. He then told me that the kids at school told him that his hair looked “stupid,” adding that it was what he already knew! I felt horrible. I couldn’t believe that I had hurt him like that. I asked him if the kids hurt his feelings, and he told me that he just became mad - at them and at me! I thought I’d cry.
Immediately, I called my hairdresser and left her a message of my latest catastrophe and asked her to call me tomorrow. When she heard my message, she called me right back and told me to bring him to her house right then. She wouldn’t allow him to go to school the next day and have other kids make fun of him. She remembered when she was in 7th grade and how she felt. What a gem!
Carson and I rushed over to her house, and she “fixed” him over her 2nd glass of wine. The sad thing is that even after a glass and a half of wine, she was a huge improvement over my totally sober haircut! I promised Carson that I would never again cut his hair, that I would always take him to a professional. He has thick “man” hair now that his mommy can’t and won’t cut again!
I’m definitely not saying that I’m giving up all forms of torture, but I am going to stop torturing him with scissors. Any suggestions on an alternative torture tool?