Making a Difference at the Kiddie Salon

ByHolly Updated on

During a recent morning  routine of having the children get dressed, fed, and their hair and teeth brushed I noticed that my two preschoolers were starting to look a bit more like shaggy dogs rather than actual children.  “Time for the kiddie salon”, I thought to myself. I love a good trip to the salon, when it is an adult salon I am visiting where there is soft music, a refreshing beverage  and copious amounts of magazines for me to read as I wait my turn.  My feelings towards the kiddie salon are a bit different. I love the look of a clean-cut child. I  hate the  sweaty process of getting the child into the taxi cab/barber chair and using all my mommy tricks to get little ones to hold their heads still.

Recently we changed kiddie hair salons  because the end result was not worth the money shelled out from my wallet.   Also, the stylist were quite intent on “encouraging” parents to buy special shampoos/conditioners/products for children’s hair. We find Suave Kids products work just great and do not have to dip into the children’s college funds to be able to afford them. Long story short, I switched salons because I could not take the sales pitch pressure anymore. I also was starting to wonder if the lego table was merely cleaned once a year due to the greasy  sheen it was sporting.

Our new  kiddie salon  is quite lovely, with a nice train table and craft room for the kids to enjoy and a wall of magazines for parents to browse. Kids watch movies on plasma screen televisions while feasting on a cup of animal crackers. It is quite the pleasant atmosphere, far from the kiddie salons of our past,  and I secretly wish the children and I could just hang out there all day.

I imagine  my two kiddos might experience some sort-of kiddie salon  withdrawals when  they reach the age of being too big for the taxi cab shaped barber chair and  would rather  have MTV on the plasma TV as opposed to  Wonder Pets.  Soon enough  the children will find themselves in the normal environment of the local $uper $avers Hair-o-Rama where there is no treasure chest to choose a prize from when the haircut is finished and no one offers a choice of animal crackers or lollipop when they hop up in that salon chair. Until then, we are sticking with the kiddie salon.

So…haircuts…yesterday…kiddie salon…

I loaded my two shaggy dogs up and off we went to our kiddie salon. Tiger, my son, is a pro at haircuts and happily slurped on his lollipop while the stylist cut away at his blonde mop. Miss E., the two year old, is a newbie to the salon experience. After some hesitation, she finally agreed that she would have her hair trimmed. Fortunately the stylist did not take the continuous crying personally.

baby's first haircut

After the cuts were given, we wistfully bid the train table and stacks of US Weekly good-bye and paid our bill. Fortunately I was toting a $5 off coupon (per cut!) so the damage was not horrible. As I was paying, a lady signing her child in next to me inquired as to where I found the coupon. I told her it had come in a mailer to my house. The coupon actually had two coupons on it, to be used at separate visits. I offered her my other coupon because it was going to expire before our next visit and because we all need to share the coupon-love.

Can I just say that the lady got a bit emotional over my extra coupon, saying that her husband had just been through a layoff and every penny counted all of the sudden at their house.

I wished her best of luck, and herded my crew out the door. As I loaded my two clean-cut children into the family, I felt a smile creep across my face. Perhaps the kiddie salon is more than screaming children and rickety formed barber seats. Perhaps it is one more place for a mommy to connect positively with the outside world. Did my gift of a coupon stop world hunger? No. Did it make a difference in our troubled economy? Likely not. It did save a fellow mom out there $5 and showed her that we are all in this mothering boat together, sticky lego tables and all.

Lynley Baker Phillips is a stay-at-home mommy to two, blogger, former special education teacher, and referee in all major toy disputes. Her writings have been featured in various publications,  on her blog, at Examiner.com and (most importantly) on her mother's refrigerator door. Contact her at [email protected]

Kids Activities Blog is Holly's blogging home.

She is the co-author of 101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! and The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments.

She is the mom of three boys ages 13, 15 & 17 who partially homeschools. She believes that you shouldn't have to buy stuff to have fun when there is a kitchen junk drawer full of possibilities.

2 Comments

  2. Wow. That is really wonderful. Hearing how happy the woman was made tears start to fill my eyes. Sometimes I forget how hard the economy is hitting local families. How wonderful that you were able to help her. It sounds like it made both of your days:)

    Reply

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