Mar
19
Okay, my mommy peeps. I have a question.
Do any of you have kids who pull out their own hair?
Stinkerbelle has started the somewhat alarming habit of pulling out her own hair. Usually, it’s during naptime or in the morning, when she is alone in her crib. We will go in and find hair all over the place. Curls litter the blanket, the sheets, the floor beside her crib. Right now, when I went to get her from her naptime… holy hell, the mess! I gathered it all up, and there’s a hairball the size of a cottonball in there.
I am starting to get a little concerned.
When she first started doing it, we thought that the hairstyles we were putting in (mostly puffs) were hurting her. She was jamming her fingers in where her part was up in front, and we thought maybe it was just pulling and tight and bugging her. But she was doing it enough that it was starting to get a little thinner up there. So this week, we’ve been leaving her hair all natural in just a headband. And it has actually been getting worse.
I did a search on Teh Intertubes, and I guess kids do this. For some it’s self-soothing, when they are upset or anxious or bored. Well, That Laid Back Baby is definitely not anxious, and she’s not upset at all when she’s in her crib. She is, if anything, bored. So, this is what she does when she is alone and bored? NICE. It’s not like she hasn’t got a CRIB FULL O’ TOYS in there. Surely there’s something she could play with?
So, if this hypothesis is right, and she is bored… am I supposed to forego naptime so that my kid is not in her crib unattended, and getting bored, and pulling out her own hair? Because that is nuts. Kids NEED to nap. Or at least to have a rest time. And so do moms. And if I have to pass on her naptime, when I can get a shower and have a little time to do whatever by myself, then it will be ME pulling out my own hair.
Still, seeing the floor littered with hair when I walk in there is really alarming. And her ‘fro is puffed out HUGE from all the messing around she has done with it during today’s naptime. I guess we are going to have to go back to styling her hair, since it seems our hypothesis about the hairstyles hurting her were incorrect. And I guess we should start trying to put a nightcap on her (which she will, of course, take off) and see if it helps.
Me, I’m tempted to get it all cut short and keep it that way until she outgrows this habit.
Honestly, when I thought I would have to learn how to care for my kid’s hair — this is NOT what I imagined.
