Barely two months after posting about Asher getting into taking care of his own hair, it turns out picking and cleaning are not high on the list of Asher's favorite things to do in life. So much so that, unsupervised, he took some scissors to his head and clipped off chunks of his curls. A rite of passage for many kids, I suppose, as validated by many of my friends who offered support when I shared this humorous incident on social.
But Amy wonders, and now I do too, if there is something deeper going on. Because I'm lazy, I've preferred keeping Asher's hair short (and my own, for that matter), because shorter hairs means less maintenance. But, Asher's desire to grow his hair out felt like an age-appropriate impulse and something that allowed him to connect deeper with his Blackness. Indeed, our communications with him on his hair maintenance tended to focus on how special his hair is (unlike anyone else's in the family) rather than seeing the responsibility as an unappealing chore.
I don't think that Asher was, consciously or sub-consciously, rebelling against his Blackness in taking a scissors to his hair. But, I can certainly understand if, if part of your identity means that you are different than others and have to do extra work, that that is something that you want to downplay or even run from. We will monitor to see how things go, including how every day his hair will grow longer and we will have a decision to make about how to take care of it and whether to keep letting it grow.
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