The sins of the parents

(www.donaldtrumphair.com)

My boys now choose to get a buzz cut each and every time

they go to the hairdressers.

I am a little uncomfortable with this.

I think that it stems back to growing up in a small country town

with the Brown family.

The Brown family men consisted of Mr Brown and his 3 sons

 All had crew cuts, seemingly getting their first buzz cut somewhere
between the delivery room and going home from hospital.

You could always pick out the Brown boys.

My boys love it because it is low maintenance.

I love it because getting their hair done in the morning is one less thing to nag them about.

Plus I figure that those dreaded head lice beasties are more reticent

to infest heads with no foliage to hide under.

My daughter doesn't chose to get a buzz cut.

Needless to say that I am happy with that decision.

However, like all little girls,

she wants gloriously long tresses without the daily maintenance 

required to stop such tresses becoming gloriously long dreadlocks.

(and I am sure one day I will find out just how much those beasties love such gloriously long tresses.

Touch wood. 3 weeks into her school life, we are nit-free.

Only another 13 years to go...)

We are still growing out my daughter's fringe,

18 months after that debacle,

and quite frankly, as a mum to 2 boys with cranial stubble,

I am not yet up to creating a neatly presented and sweet hairstyle 

in the middle of the pre-second-coffee mad house that is a school morning

and repeating this 5 mornings a week.

At the moment she thinks lop-sided pigtails are cute

and my possibly weird, combed-over creations "beautiful"

(bless the innocence -and trust- of a 5 year old)

but I am telling you that I am going to need a steep learning curve

 if she wants something presentable other than a pony tail every day of her future school life.

I still have horrific visions of one particular year of school photos

where my mother managed to send me off to school

with those sticky-up bits that you wake up with.

I don't think that I actually had a mullet

(though it was the 70s so anything is possible)

but in that photo, I certainly looked like I did.

(I was honestly going to be brave enough to post a copy of said photo

but I don't actually have one.

I suspect my mother is keeping it for future blackmailing purposes)

So I am somewhat (somewhat? Not somewhat. Try very bloody) relieved to find out that this year's school photos are happening while we are away on an extended family holiday.

Quite frankly, on that day, I turn into a pageant mother

It is no mean feat to get 2 young children to their respective photo shoots

(somehow always at the end of the school day)

with clean uniforms, decent hair and no Vegemite on their faces or uniform.

I will own up to licking my hand to wet down a wayward piece of hair

on the way to school one year.

It is a far greater pressure than the one I place on myself to get the nice photo with Santa each year.

Imagine me trying to do it with 3 kids,

one of whom  has dicky -growing -out -fringe stuff happening

and often has her school skirt half stuck in her stockings.

...cute at home; not so cute in print.

I blame my mother and that school photo for the obsession I have about this.

We all swear that there are things that were done to us

that we will never do to our children.

We will never hit them with a wooden spoon.

We will never force them to play football or eat brussel sprouts.

(We will never lick a hand to pat down wayward hair)

I know that when we actually become parents, we end up doing half of them anyway

but let me state for the record:

I will never send my children to school photo day with anything but a decent (and hopefully fabulous but I will settle for decent)  hair-do.

If I can offer them a  future embarrassment-free album of school photographs,

I have achieved some level of success as parent.

But when they get their driver's license photo,

they are on their own.

Unless they have a sticky-up bit of wayward hair...