
The best lessons we can teach our daughters to live by is that their beauty and value have nothing to do with the way they look. It's also a pretty great idea to instill confidence in a daughter that lets her take control and ownership of her body. And that's just what one mom on Reddit thought she was doing by letting her 8-year-old daughter shave her head bald.
Her daughter got the idea to do it when she saw how "cool" her 17-year old cousin looked.
Since the mom considers herself a supportive one, and lets her children do what they want within reason, she saw no reason to not let her daughter do what she wanted with her hair.
"She had extremely long, blonde, gorgeous hair just like I do," the mom notes. "She was fully aware that I was going to support her decision, school was cancelled for the rest of the year and she won't go back to school until August (possibly September) so her hair will have time to grow out."
"So ... I got out my husband's clippers and shaved her head for her. She smiled the whole time and loved the end result."
The next day she sent a photo to her mother (and only her mother) to show her what the child looked like.
Her mother then proceeded to forward the photo to a bunch of family members who took it upon themselves to get back to her about it.
"…90% of them agree that I'm the [expletive] for not saying no to her and setting limits for her, and also told me that I'm setting her up for bullying," she said.
"Here's the thing -- it's literally her hair will grow back," justified the mom. "She knows."
"I asked her if she regretted it and she is extremely happy that she did it," the mom also claims. "As for bullying, she knows how to stand up for herself and that hair doesn't define her beauty."
While the mom doesn't think she did anything wrong, she was curious: Do other people see her as the villain in this situation?
For the most part, Reddit was totally on this mama's side
"It may take a while to grow out, but the lesson on self-determination will be lifelong," one user lauded. "Everyone else who thinks mom needs to set limits needs a course on bodily autonomy and on the policing of women's bodies."
And as far as it goes with the bullying, people noted a pretty valid point.
"Ironically, it is all the relatives that are doing the bullying," one user wrote.
"Maybe the kid will want to keep the shaved head? Who cares," wrote one user. "People who tie children’s beauty to having long flowing hair are weirdos. Let kids have whatever hair they want."
Props to this mama for standing by her girl.
One thing this little girl will never forget is how her mama stood by a choice that was her and utterly harmless to make. The sooner our daughters have that bodily confidence, the better off they'll be, and frankly, this mama nailed it.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.