Hair Pulling Fun!

Andy pulls hair. He pulls hair hard, and he doesn't let go. He pulls hair like it's his goal to somehow yank your brain out through your skull, closely examine it, proclaim it a "ball," and then hand it sweetly back to you for a game of catch. He has a surprisingly strong grip for someone with hands the size of kitten paws. He is also adept at getting individual hair strands wrapped around his fingers so that disentanglement rapidly becomes a horrible puzzle that you must solve behind your head while enduring the kind of pain that makes you regret every life decision you've ever made up until that very moment.

I have to assume that Andy's not trying to be mean, and that there's a good-natured intention behind the barbaric and, let's face it, shitty act. Perhaps Andy somehow got the impression that savagely pulling a curl of hair was a non-verbal way of communicating, "Let's eat pizza together this Friday." It is true that Andy never seems to be in a mean mood when the pulling takes place. He is usually playful during hair-pulling bouts, squealing in delight as my eyes tear up and my head snaps back. He is usually acting like he's been considering a Friday pizza party.

He pulls my hair, of course, and there have been times when I've victoriously removed his hand from my hair only to find several of my hair strands still wrapped around his stubby little fingers. I fear that I am slowly undergoing a toddler-induced bout of female baldness and that eventually my sparsely covered head, littered with uneven bald patches, will start to affect my social life. "I was going to invite Jackie to the party," an old friend might whisper during some amazingly fun event involving little tacos and butter pecan ice cream. "But have you seen her lately? There's something going on in her hair, and it's making her look crazy. Not good crazy, either, but bad crazy, like she's dressing animals in clothes and discussing odd medical conditions with strangers at the bank."

"I heard that her hair problem is related to her son, Andy," some other old friend might say in my defense, biting into a deliciously cheesy little taco.

"That doesn't explain why she now has a cat that wears sweaters," the first friend will reply. "Have you tried the butter pecan ice cream? There's, like, extra pecans in it! So good!"

Aside from my hair, I've witnessed Andy pulling on the pigtails of the neighborhood girls and on random other sets of hair when we've been out and about at playgrounds. The pigtails especially seem to intrigue Andy, and I imagine that part of him must expect the girls to erupt in some awesome noise or wondrous display of lights after the pigtail is yanked. After all, many of Andy's toys encourage him to push and pull protrusions, rewarding him with a silly buzz or a flash of color. It's possible Andy sees the pigtails as joy buzzers of sort. In a way, they sort of are: Andy pulls, the girl shrieks. Cause and effect in a real life toy. I'm sure Andy would prefer they sing the first few lines of "Pop Goes The Weasel" instead of crying, but little boys can't be too picky about the noisy reactions of inanimate objects, neighbors, and other such items of amusement.

I've also been told that Andy pulls the hair of his day care friends. "Andy had a good day," his teacher starts out every day when I pick him up. I think she classifies "good day" as "didn't get accidentally locked in a storage closet." "But," she sometimes continues, "he was pulling hair again." There's a slight pause in which I murmur some vague acknowledgement coupled with a promise to "take care of it." Then, everyone's all smiles, and we head out the door to go home for an evening of stacking blocks, taking our socks off, and, you got it, pulling hair.

The thing is, I don't know how to take care of this problem. I've tried firmly telling Andy "NO" during a hair pulling spell. I've tried taking his hand in mine, squeezing it gently, looking into his eye, and repeating "No. Hair. Pulling." I've removed his hand from the hair in question and said "Ouchy! That's ouchy! It hurts!" I've lightly slapped his hand after particularly bad hair pulling. I'm basically out of ideas. The only other thing I can think of doing is pulling his hair back, but I'm not sure I want to go down the eye-for-an-eye route this early in my parenting career.

I did try something new on Saturday evening, after Andy pulled my hair so hard that when my head jerked back, I swear I time traveled exactly three seconds into the future. There was a definite shift in the time continuum. "Andy," I cried, plucking my hair out of his fist. He had a big, happy grin on his face, and he reached back over to pull another hank. "That's it," I stated, swooping him into my arms and carrying him into the darkened living room. "You're getting a time out."

Who's this guy?

To be honest, the concept of a time out for child this young seems a tad bit ludicrous to me, but I'm not the world's foremost expert on child discipline and everyone knows I've been wrong before, so I thought I'd give it a try. I sat Andy down on the couch, bent before him, and held him in place so that he couldn't move. I looked him in the eyes, kept my face serious, and started counting. I wasn't sure how high I was going to go, but the numbers started coming out.

My first mistake was looking him in the eyes. He gave me a sweet smile, and my heart melted a little more than it should have.

My second mistake was our positioning. I had placed my head in perfect position so that my hair was accessible to his grabby hands. His claws started hovering over my head, and I winced as I realized my mistake (skipping from 12 straight to 17), but then something miraculous happened. Andy chose not to pull my hair.

Instead, as if struck with inspiration, he changed course and stuck his stinky little feet- both of them- directly under my nose and howled with laughter as he made me smell them. He laughed like he was the world's funniest boy and had just done the world's funniest thing. He stuck his toes practically in my nostrils and belly laughed so hard that I couldn't help but join in, laughing along with him as he waved his feet right under my nose.

Needless to say, I lost count completely, and the time out was a bust.

We went back to the family room, sat down on the floor, and I retied my hair into a tighter bun so no loose pieces would fall out as temptation. For now, I have resigned myself to waiting for Andy to grow out of this phase and into another one, such as biting or credit fraud. Until then, I'll keep saying "no" and just hope that Andy is not successful in actually pulling out someone's brain- mine or anybody else's.