A mum let her five-year-old daughter cut her own hair - after finding her in the middle of chopping it off. Valerie Farlow, 37, was “shocked” when she checked on Lexicon, now eight, and found her using children’s scissors to hack off her hair.
The mum-of-two let Lexicon carry on chopping her locks as the “damage was done” but made sure her daughter was happy with the results after. A week later, she convinced Lexicon to have a hairdresser cut her locks into a pixie cut – after the pair browsed hairstyles together. Lexicon hasn’t cut her again since, but parents Valerie and Bryce, 37, a graphic designer, let their daughter style herself and experiment with make-up to “express herself”.
Valerie, a marketer, said: “I came downstairs to check on her and she had her head over a trash can cutting her hair. I already saw the damage was done.
“I was in shock. But I wasn’t going to shame her or make her feel bad about it. I let her keep cutting it. Then I said ‘let's pause’.
“After we went to look in the mirror and I said ‘(do) you like this?’ I told her: ‘if you want to I can take you to the salon and we can fix it.'
“She turned around and said – ‘why would I fix it because it’s perfect?’ We made sure she knew not cut other people’s hair. We just let her express herself.”
Valerie first caught Lexicon, then five, cutting her fringe in August 2020, while learning from home during the pandemic.
She said: “Her school desk was next to my work desk. She was learning to cut at school and doing guided cutting exercises.
“She decided to cut her bangs. I didn’t notice, and she was on with the teacher. Then I noticed her hair was everywhere.
“I said ‘what have you done?’ She just said ‘I’m just playing’. I realised it wasn’t a horrendous thing. I said to her ‘you see the mess you made’ and she said ‘OK, I understand’.”
Subscribe here for the latest news where you live
But Lexicon decided to get out the scissors again in October 2020 and chopped her brown shoulder length hair into a scruffy bob.
Valerie said: “I take a lot of family photos and it as just before we were having a load done. I just thought 'that is what you’re going to look like in them - you do you'. But I thought ‘how am I going to coach her out of this?'”
Lexicon decided she didn’t want to get her hair professionally styled at first but changed her mind a week later after flicking through different hairstyles with her mum.
Valerie said: “She saw a pixie style and thought it looked cute. She hasn’t cut her own hair since.”
Valerie shared the video of the moment she caught Lexicon cutting her hair but wants others to know that her reaction to the incident was not necessarily the “right way”.
She said: “I didn’t post it to say this is the right or wrong way by might be another reaction you could have.”
The mum is big on letting Lexicon and little sister, Rockstar, five, express themselves.
Valerie, from Collin County, Texas, US, said: “Lexicon styles what she wears herself – sometimes it’s outrageous. She does her make-up sometimes.
“She has my old make-up. She’s always been independent. We let them be however they want to be. We give them that space to explore that. As long as it’s safe, happy and they are not hurting anyone we’re going to let them be themselves.”
