My daughter is having a hard time with her vision. Something is going on. We’re hoping it’s just pressure dropping in her eyes, but if it is, it’s happened fast and the change in her vision is dramatic—she is seeing less and less every day and it’s scary. She’s not coping well, something we can tell in her reactions to things happening around her. She’s defiant, won’t listen and is easily upset. It’s not easy to get information out of her but she’s seeing her play therapist tomorrow, which I am hopeful will give us some insight and even more than that, help center her.
Today we decided to cut her hair. For the longest time I’ve wanted my daughter to have long hair. It’s been a tough path though as her hair is fine and breaks easily. We have to put it up in bows or it’s in her face (and in her food). It’s a mess to dry and maintain but until today we’ve kept it long and managed.
After school my daughter knew, and was excited about getting her hair cut. We were going to have her hair styled like her next door neighbor and good friend, Madison, in a short bob with bangs. I was wary of bangs because the only other time we did bangs was when she was put on IV steroids and immunosuppressants and she bloated up like an unrecognizable version of herself. But it was time; today was the day.
This much was cut off:
My daughter was faring well, holding still and seemed fairly into the cut. Then her brother came into the salon with dad and a smoothie for her. He immediately said, “you look funny!” I didn’t think it was a nice comment but I didn’t know how much it hurt my daughter until I saw tears rolling down her face, silently, as she sat there. I asked her if she was crying because of what her brother said and she replied, “maybe”.
I pulled him aside and we had a conversation and at the end of the haircut when my daughter put her glasses back on he said, “you look good now with your glasses on.” I hope it helped, but I don’t know. My daughter suffers silently most of the time; this was one of the only times I’ve ever seen her show emotional pain from a direct comment.
On the ride home I was talking about how easy it would be to dry her hair and how she didn’t have to have bows any more and, hey, we could let it dry without the hairdryer some nights and let it go curly, to which she said, “don’t ever say that again.” I don’t know how she’s feeling, but she’s not confident about her hair cut yet (it looks great on her).
One other thing happened that shows you how she sees the world differently—my son was saying she and Madison looked the same now and since she wore Madison’s handed down clothes maybe people couldn’t tell them apart. My daughter replied, “people won’t confuse us because no one has the same voice as me.”
Tomorrow at school I have a feeling she’ll get a lot of positive comments from teachers and friends. Hopefully it will help improve her mental image of herself now. We saw several friends in the back yard also tonight and they thought her hair cut looked great on her. It does, she looks quite cute with her new short hair.
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