How to Cut Your Child’s Hair at Home
A couple of months before the pandemic, my son, who always wore a pretty neat haircut, suddenly decided he liked it better. Well, either he liked it longer, or he just didn’t want to sit on a haircut. However, I am now in isolation with a 9-year-old boy who has not had a haircut since December.
As his hair gets closer and closer to his eyes every day, I began to research how to cut it myself without making the bad situation worse. Although he has not yet relented that it is time to let Mom go to his wild mane, I think we are getting closer. And you probably do too. You may not want to do a haircut at home as a regular activity (I certainly don’t want to). But many of us will have to make do with at least a little DIY scissors for the next few weeks or months.
If you like step-by-step graphical guides, there are some good ones. ThisWikiHow’s guide to haircuts for girls is particularly thorough and helpful. It describes the basic tools you’ll need (namely a fine-toothed comb and a pair of sharp scissors), along with instructions on how to get a basic haircut, how to add layers, and how to trim bangs. This guide from Parents.com goes over most of these basics and shows you how to trim short hair and how to use a clipper to trim your hair to one length or get rid of fading.
However, I need to see how someone actually does this. And for this you end up on YouTube. There are tons of videos to choose from on YouTube, depending on your child’s gender, age, and hairstyle. If you dig around and look at a few, you will get a lot of tips and tricks.
For example, one little tip inthis video seems to be worth repeating: for young children, if you are using a towel or some kind of cape to catch your hair, put it backwards. It frees up their hands (to keep them on the device while you work!) And makes them feel less constrained and more like haircut superheroes.
Another good tip fromthis video on trimming the hair of a toddler boy : If you are using a pair of clippers, go with the “grain” of the hair (the way the hair grows), in the same way you would go with the grain of wood when sanding or dyeing.
Both videos above are suitable for short haircuts, but here’s one of them that I need in my life – instructions on how to cut a long shaggy haircut:
If you have a kid with longer hair that doesn’t fall in his eyes yet, and you really don’t want to become a home stylist, you can probably wait out the haircut until the pandemic dies down. But if your daughter is wearing a cute bob that you want to keep up with,this video provides simple steps to help you achieve this straight cut:
Or maybe you just need a little help with the bangs! This mom gave us a simple method for trimming two-tailed bangs – with the bonus idea of tucking the baby into a highchair with lots of snacks to keep her calm and keep her busy during the process:
One final tip I learned from watching a few demos is that it’s ideal to keep your child’s head at eye level while you cut, but if your chair isn’t high enough and is too small to be a safe alternative, you can sit them. onto the sheet on the floor and kneel behind them to get the best angle.
And remember, these are not normal times. We’ve all got a lot of extra everything on our plates right now. If you get really confused, it’s just hair. It will grow up again.