I like my hair.
I’d like to keep it. (or at least most of it?)
I think that’s a reasonable thing for a girl to hope for. (did I mention I’m the only girl that lives here?)
Over the summer, I have experimented A LOT with how to deal with Graham’s aggressive behavior and he has made tremendous progress with self-control and quick recovery time! Yay! I will expand on that in a different post, so stay tuned.
Graham’s go-to response if he’s even the slightest bit unhappy is to grab/pull/kick/throw. Think of him as a 3 year old non-verbal child who is in a 200 pound football-esq adult man’s body who walks as slow as a snail with Frankenstein movements. It finally dawned on me why episodes with me (and his female aides at school) are more difficult to get out of and many times require the help of someone else.
It’s the hair!
Guys can get away much easier because he’s mostly pulling on their shirt. Not so easy to get distance from him when his little fingers have a tight grip on a girl’s hair. And once you do break away from him, you start to find clumps of hair that are no longer attached to your head, like this:
The solution?
Personal protective equipment. Head protection gear. Safety helmet. In other words…
A HAT!
Hubby had this sick look on his face as we shopped at a sporting goods store to find me the perfect save-my-hair-hat. I looked at him and said with a smirk “this is how much I love you”.
My lovely co-worker, Anna, and I were brainstorming one day about possible protective wear. We came up with a bicycle hat. However, hubby decided that the holes in that hat would give Graham places for his fingers to hold on to. I then pictured a smooth baseball hat to cover my hair with some sort of chin strap that could hold tight long enough for me to get distance and that could break free easily so I can avoid choking.
[excuse me while I take a moment to take in the fact that I just wrote that last sentence]
We found this:
Relax. It’s just a prototype. I’m not sure what it’s real purpose is, but this had a baseball hat top with cloth coming down on both sides that attach under your chin with velcro.
I introduced this to Graham as a hat that would help him not to pull my hair. To help him ‘control his temper’ (a phrase we have been using with him this summer). This odd looking hat has seen action once so far and it was successful! We were sitting at the dinner table and I could tell he was on edge. So I put it on and when he tried to grab my hair, he couldn’t and he didn’t bother to try a second time. So we’ll continue to use this for now.
That is, until I can talk Scott into buying me one of these ADORABLE equestrian hats:
C’mon, you gotta give me some kudos for creativity?
1 comment
Hat’s off to you, my love. Thank you for working through these things instead of buying the other hat, and the horse, and riding off into the sunset.