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Child Behavior

by Sandy
(USA)

Photo Credit:  robinn

Photo Credit: robinn

Back in September my seven year old daughter cut her hair drastically. When she looked in the mirror and noticed how much she had cut she was embarrassed and sad. She had long bangs/hair. She cut very, very short bangs and cut one side of her hair completely short.

With that said, at the end of November my daughter was playing with her seven year old cousin and decided to cut her hair. A short piece and a long piece. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable. Now not to get too much into family dynamics here, my sis and bro-in law were livid, aggressive, and hurtful to us over the situation.

They called this 'malicious behavior' siting that my daughter was traumatized and shameful over cutting her own hair, wanting to cause the same shame and trauma to her cousin. They both were involved and one hid the scissors and one hid the hair. The incident was found out the next day by the parents because the children did not 'fess up'.

I do feel responsible, however, I defended the fact that my child, with no prior incidents and gets along with her cousin extremely well, did not act in a malicious manner.

My question is what do seven years olds 'act on' when they do this? When asked why she did this, my daughter just says, 'I don't know'.

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to be young
by: Thomas

your seven year old is acting like a seven year old.

experimenting with the world, emulating others, testing authority, along with many other things, is all part of growing up.

if you take the scissors and hair cutting away and substitute: touching the hot dinner plate after being warned or putting on moms lip stick. you would have the same experimenting, learning by doing, that children do. its just that sometimes children experimenting with the world has tougher consequences then others. its hard to watch children learning sometimes, that's all.

bad behavior in children is easy to spot. you'll know if there is any malice there.

as for you relatives? well, we all have them, we just never get to pick them.

all the best to you and your daughter, the budding beautician.

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