The stay-at-home dad: A 4-year-old weighs in on long hair for boys

I want to talk about how my 4-year-old son thinks long hair is “for girls.” I promise it won’t be a political conversation!

Let’s state the obvious up front: Gender is not defined by hair length. Plenty of men wear their hair long and plenty of women opt for short.

As little kids grow, they use societal norms and what they experience around them to better understand their own identity. A 4-year-old sees his dad, his older brother and the other males in his life with mostly short hair, and he sees his two sisters, his mom and other females with mostly long hair. So, boom, he codes short hair for boys and long hair for girls.

There’s nothing wrong with this thought process for a 4-year-old, though it eventually requires a more clarifying conversation from parents at some point. And you definitely want to have this conversation as early as their understanding allows. Otherwise you might turn out like me, profusely apologizing to the mom of a long-haired toddler in the line of a Silverwood ride.

Let me backtrack: A few years ago, my youngest daughter, then about 3 years old, approached a kid who seemed close to her age in line for the miniature train roller coaster ride at Silverwood. She talked to the kid for a minute before looking up to me to declare, “This girl looks like she’s 3 like me!”

I looked down at the kid, obviously a boy (his hair wasn’t even that long; just not short), then glanced up to see the face of the boy’s mom, who didn’t seem particularly happy with my daughter’s remark.

I quickly apologized to the mother… something casual like, “Oh, sorry, she doesn’t see too many other kids besides her own siblings.” At the same time, my wife crouched down to whisper to our daughter and quietly tell her that she was talking to a boy. I liked this choice, just because, while not a big deal for a 4-year-old to misunderstand, you don’t need to keep talking about this boy’s hair right in front of him.

If only my daughter didn’t suffer from that lifelong affliction known as “Refusing-to-be-wrong Syndrome.”

She responded to my wife loudly, “That’s a girl! She has long hair and girls have long hair!”

I apologized again and… luckily, the line began to move. We could all finally leave this “Curb Your Enthusiasm” moment behind… or at least until we bumped into them again later in the day.

To me, the most amusing thing about this incident was my daughter’s long history with super short hair. It had really only been that year when her hair started to grow out into “normal” length.

Anyway, through more (private) conversations, she eventually learned a more nuanced approach to societal hair norms. But the embarrassment of that Silverwood incident stuck with me so well that I was going to be darn well sure our youngest son would learn the nuance of hair before he had a chance to make public remarks on the subject.

That discussion happened last week. First, just a bit more table-setting…

My son hates haircuts. I think he’s had three in his entire life, and we’ve had to feed him a constant stream of Skittles and other candies just to make him sit long enough to run the buzzer.

His hair is long now… maybe as long as it’s ever been, to the point where it bothers him when his bangs fall over his eyes. We ask him every day if he wants a haircut, and every day he refuses.

Then, a few days ago, he asked me to guess what color clothes he was about to change into. I rattled off some colors… blue, green, red, etc. and he smiled and responded “No.”

Then I guessed pink and he frowned. “I don’t wear pink,” he said. “Girls wear pink.”

It had been the first time I heard him say anything like this. Since he has two super-cool older sisters, he’s always been excited about their interests, including things like painting nails, playing with Barbie dolls, etc. These aren’t “girl exclusive” activities, but let’s be honest about it — more girls paint nails and play with Barbies than boys. But at the same time, our 4-year-old hasn’t really been exposed to anything that definitively declares pink to be a “girl color” or Barbies to be a “girl toy.” Sure, his older brother likes “boy things,” but he likes his painted nails too.

Anyway, I’m happy this comment happened at home and NOT at Silverwood, and we ended up having a fun little conversation about how you can like any color, regardless of gender. I also enjoyed this conversation because it gave me an opportunity to show him my wide variety of Minnesota Twins hats. “Here’s one with purple on it. Here's a cool one where the ‘TC’ logo is hot pink…”

It seemed like another home run parenting moment for me. Boom. I don’t have to worry about the 4-year-old insulting another stranger.

The next day, however, my son walked into my bedroom and told my wife and I that he finally wanted a haircut.

“Tired of that hair falling in front of your eyes?” my wife asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m a boy and boys have short hair.”

So we need to have more conversations in the future, I guess.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 4-8. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.