Four-year-old boy suspended from school for long hair
A suburban Dallas school district has suspended a 4-year-old from his prekindergarten class because he wears his hair too long and does not want his parents to cut it. via Boy, 4, Chooses Long Locks and Is Suspended From Class – NYTimes.com.
What is it with adults and long hair? I’ve blogged about this before, wondering (and getting wildly divergent responses) when a child is old enough to choose his/her own hairstyle. Now we have parents supporting a boy’s penchant for long, curly hair while the school district says no way, it’s too distracting. The double standard is obvious here; I’m sure there are girls in the class with long, curly, distracting hair who have not been told to chop it off.
In our house, the battle rages on. Our middle school son loves his hair long — and stringy and greasy. I don’t mind the long hair, if he would just wash it properly. He is showering at the moment and I swear if I weren’t occupied at the computer I would not be able to resist sticking my arms behind the shower curtain and giving his head a proper scrub. His hair is super thick, but it’s still somewhat miraculous (not in a good way, obviously) how he manages to come out of a long shower and shampoo with hair that is still stringy and greasy.
My son thinks his hair looks awesome. I don’t want to undermine his confidence at his tender pre-adolescent age but there are days when he truly has a face/head that only a mother could love. What to do? Let him be until the hormones kick in and he suddenly cares what he looks like? Lop it off? Give him a hat? I think that last option would be against school policy. Too distracting.
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Laughing out loud. Our son, who is 3, is heading for the same fate. He has a head of curly hair that he doesn’t want us to cut, and that we don’t want to cut.
I can speak with experience about long stringy hair, although, unlike your son, I didn’t seem to enter that phase until college. (Meaning your guy is very advanced.) In those days, we weren’t called distracting; we were told we all looked alike with our long hair and beards and Army surplus clothes.
And I guess I believed that, until I got older, cut my hair, and got a job commuting from New Jersey into New York City. There we were at 6:45 am waiting for the train in the chill, misty semi-darkness, all with short hair, beige trench coats, dark slacks and shoes, nearly identical briefcases, the Times stuck under our arms, and even matching paper cups with coffee.
Now who looks alike? With our long hair and beards, we actually looked quite distinctive. Nobody’s stringy, greasy hair matches anybody else’s. It wasn’t until we grew up that we conformed.
Well put, Paul. And I like thinking that my 11-year-old son is precocious in opting for the long, stringy look. His hair is even more annoying to my husband, who seems to forget that, though now bald, he once had long curly hair and a beard that probably really bothered his parents.
In response to another comment. See in context »The school has standards and the parents are choosing to violate them. Good Parents, great example. This is such a non-story or rather it is a mis-directed story., Instead of being about the child’s hair, it should be about Parents who feel they don’t need abide by Schools clearly spelled out rules on personal appearance. I am very sure they knew the policy and purposely chose to violate it. In order to bypass the rules they chose to gel and pin the child’s hair so that he looked like a she. These types of Parents do us no favors. They can chose any school they wish, I would though if I there them stick the current school, as it is hard to find any Public School with Standards of any kind anymore.
All for individuality, however this a child. Not a pre-adolescent, a child in pre-school. His parents do him more harm than good.
Are there really pre-schools with written policies about hair? I’ve never heard of one. I see you point, that parents should obey rules and set an example by doing so. But don’t they also set an example by challenging a school that doesn’t have a policy and just decides that someone’s hair is “distracting.” What does that mean, anyway? If long hair is truly distracting, shouldn’t the school have a policy that applies to boys and girls having long hair? I can’t imagine they’d force a four-year-old curl with beautiful long hair to cut it off.
In response to another comment. See in context »Having grown up in rural Oklahoma the idea that parents can “choose” another public school is absolutely inaccurate. The small town I lived in even combined with another town in order to have enough students for one grade school and one middle/high school. The policies should be questioned if they are blatantly sexist and especially if you have no other choice but to attend the only option in town – or towns.
But it’s also true that at the end of the day if you are under the age of 18 you must abide by the school policy. Doesn’t mean you can’t try and fight it – that’s simply being an active citizen.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ms. Dukess,
I will offer two completely unrelated and, sadly I fear, un-insightful observations. Nonetheless I feel strangely compelled to type them out here.
1) Whenever I hear school officials talk about a “policy” I smell a rat. When my daughter was in middle school she was not able to enroll in algebra because her math teacher from the previous year did not recommend her for the class, that was School “policy”. The problem was that her math teacher had a serious health problem and was out of school for the last three months of school and so was unable to recommend anyone for algebra and substitutes, even long term ones, cannot make the recommendation. Given these unusual circumstances it was suggested, might not the school bend the policy? We were told, no, policy is policy. So we asked to see this policy. Well it turns out there was no actual written policy, it was, we were told, more of practice. My daughter was subsequently enrolled in algebra.
I would be really intrigued to see this “policy” about boys long hair.
2) I find this story strangely reminiscent of my own youth. I did not grow up in rural anywhere but just stone’s throw from down town Los Angeles. Nonetheless, in those days it was indeed a common practice to deny services to boys with long hair. There was a time when a boy would be turned away from Disney Land if his hair was too long (I kid you not). I was at a sporting event where boys were not allowed to compete if their hair went over their ears. My father had spent the last few months of his service in the Navy as a barber and so he was able to rescue these poor, long haired athletes with a tiny pair of scissor someone’s mother had and newspapers for a smock. It was of course not just boys who suffered under these seemingly endless series of gender-role rules. I can still remember the day a girl showed up to school in pants (a pants suit ensemble actually) and was sent home.
Such silly and arbitrary rules were once quite common and I suspect that some rural bureaucrat just came up with this policy on the spot.
Ha — imagine if Disney turned kids away for long hair. The parks would be empty….
In response to another comment. See in context »I agree with your first point — policies somehow miraculously appear when school administrators are made uncomfortable.
It’s been my experience that these “rules” exist so as not to set a precedent. For example, my son tried out for his middle school golf team, secured a spot, but realized after the practice schedule was handed out that there was going to be a conflict with the tutoring schedule leading up to his Bar Mitzvah, a once in a lifetime event. The school had a policy that athletic “dropouts” were subsequently banned from trying out for any other sports later in the year. Despite the fact that the season or practices hadn’t yet started and that there was an alternate who could easily take his place, the administration refused to make an exception. Rather than fight it further, we decided to make this a teachable moment to my son, i.e. people in authority aren’t always right, even if they do have the power.
A teachable moment, indeed, but a tough one. I think these rigid rules exist and are so loyally enforced to prevent the people in authority from actually have to think and make wise decisions and, where necessary, exceptions. It may be in the interests of being fair to be so absolute but it just ends up ridiculous!
In response to another comment. See in context »My eyes rolled so high I think I punched a hole in the ceiling. Seriously? What kind of dorky crap is this suspending a four year old from school because he made a conscious decision to keep his hair long? I think they should be impressed that he wants to keep his hair long at such a young age.
Idiots.
These school administrators need to move past the culture wars of the 1960’s. Long hair doesn’t “mean” what it used to mean. It’s a personal decision. Some people like long hair. Some people don’t. Every generation does something to tweak their parents and teachers. But it’s just hair. It only has meaning if we assign it meaning.