minoanmiss: A detail of the Ladies in Blue fresco (Lady in Blue)
minoanmiss ([personal profile] minoanmiss) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2021-12-15 04:01 pm

Dear Prudence: Posted for the Puns

Work has left me too frayed to braid in additions, but I still had to award this one a ribbon.

Help! I’m Losing Sleep Over What My Daughter Wants to Do to Her Hair.

Everything to lose and nothing to Rogaine: My spouse (she/her) and I (he/him) are tangled up in our 21-year-old daughter’s hair.

She’s a college senior, and generally doing well, except for one knotty issue: She’s headed to the stylist for a severe haircut for a college theater role—think Captain Picard in Star Trek.

One parent feels youth is a good time for experimentation; people, including women, can sport shaved heads if they like; and hair grows back. The other parent is certain that shearing her lovely locks is a serious mistake our daughter will deeply regret. (She’ll be looking for a social services job soon—what, this parent wonders, will interviewers say about a candidate whose scalp is reminiscent of Sir Ben Kingsley?) Please don’t brush us off—help us get to the root of our problem. In all seriousness, one of us is losing sleep over the situation.


Okay, I’m not brushing you (or your spouse, whichever of you is worried) off. But if you are losing sleep over a 21-year-old’s haircut, that tells me you have a lot of bandwidth available for worrying and are likely not having to deal with concerns about things like your daughter’s mental or physical health, her drug use, her abusive relationship, her eating disorder, or her dropping out of school. Give yourself a pat on the back as parents. Your kid is fine. With a combination of luck and good parenting, you helped her make all the way to adulthood and through college free from any huge crisis, and your biggest concern is about something that, even if it proves to be a terrible idea, will be fixed (or at least a pixie cut) in six months. You should go out to dinner to celebrate! It’s 2021 and I sincerely believe a significant percentage of employers (and definitely the employer that is right for her) won’t care about her hairstyle.

You asked for the root of the problem: The difficult transition that is letting a young adult offspring grow up and make their own choices. You and your spouse want to protect them from pain and struggle, and that’s okay. But you need to trust that you’ve done your job and she can make her own choices now.

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