What do you do when your child is (gulp) not very nice?

As we walked home from school yesterday, Alexandra (5) slipped her slightly sticky hand into mine. Unlike her sisters, who always run ahead with their friends, Alexandra prefers to stay with me and discuss her day...

"Emma got a haircut," she started out, now swinging my hand energetically. "It's really, really short," and there was something in the way she said this that struck me the wrong way. This was the first I had heard of Emma and I wondered if she was a new girl...

"She looks like a boy!" Alexandra exclaimed and she squelched her nose up disapprovingly.  I could just imagine my daughter and her little friends cattily discussing this haircut. My stomach dropped to my toes.

I stopped and looked at my middle daughter, not knowing what to say. To save money, my father cut our hair (all five of us rug rats). After one of these barber sessions, my mother dressed me in a new frock and sent me to a friend's party. I remember a group of girls, hands on hips, telling me that boys shouldn't wear dresses. I was devastated, and vowed to never cut my hair short again. I still have long hair.

 "What if mummy cut your hair and it was too short and you didn't like it?" I said and I knelt down to her level. Nothing. "How would you feel if someone told you you looked like a boy?" Another non-reaction. "Do you think you hurt Emma's feelings?"

"It's really bad mummy."

"What's bad?"

"Her hair."

UUgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

What do you do when your children aren't little angels?

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