Three inches would have done the job, but maybe I got a little scissor-happy. Four inches came off.

Four inches can be a big deal. It’s certainly the difference between a way-too-long ponytail and a tad-too-short ponytail. But it’s hair, the only thing it’s going to do is grow again. And I have children in high school; in fifth grade, this should not be a tragedy of epic proportion.

But it was. And daughter cycled through the five stages of grief, spending inordinate amounts of time in the anger and depressed stages, never quite making it to acceptance. She yelled, wailed, letting the whole family (and the whole block) know how distressed she was. She screamed for hours Sunday night, woke up the next morning with puffy, red eyes, and continued in her depressed mode for large parts of the day.

I responded with empathy (hugs, love, and soothing sounds), a touch of remorse (I was the one wielding the scissors, after all, and it was an inch shorter than it should have been), and some healthy pragmatism (it’s hair, it will grow back!). This is not my first daughter, so I know how a haircut gone wrong can really derail things, and I tried to play the role of the strong mother absorbing her disappointment.

When daughter came down on Tuesday morning looking glum, my husband turned to me with a quizzical expression. Yeah, it was still the haircut.

Thankfully, Tuesday brought some school project and along with it, some friends, so by afternoon, haircut was forgotten as daughter went to tend to her many social obligations. (It may surprise you to know that she still had friends despite the socially off length of her new ponytail.)

Wednesday night brought Exhibit B. Daughter decided she wants a robot. Smart child that she is, she approached the parent who defaults to yes (her father) to make her case. Smart man that he is, before saying yes, he told her that they’d have to discuss it with Mommy.

A robot? For what? That does what? That costs how much? Can you guess what Mommy said?

No. Just no!

You know my daughter by now, and yes, her grief was once again immediate, extreme, and intense. She threw herself around the room wailing and sobbing and begging for the robot.

You don’t know me well yet, though. The empathetic, soothing mother from Sunday night was a fluke. In real life, I have little patience for ten-year-olds having full-blown meltdowns, and after nearly a week of playing the patient mother, my reserves had run dry. Her yelling brought on my own. I told Daughter to get to her room, to quiet down, or else…. My own reaction was loud enough and threatening enough that she listened. And when I entered her room a little while later and saw her still in the throes of mourning, I lost it again, and told her to get a hold of herself.

And what do you know, she did. About an hour later, Daughter emerged from her room, and began her nighttime routine. The next morning, she was back to her sunny self.

So now: the results.

Clearly, on Sunday (and Monday and Tuesday), Daughter felt justified engaging in extreme behavior about a relatively minor blip. And on Wednesday, she got the memo to man up — and she did. Was it the validation that gave her the license to indulge in tantrums and sulks for much too long? Did she sense the apology and regret in my words, and feed off that? Did she realize that I wasn’t about to stand for a repeat on Wednesday and therefore pulled herself together?

Don’t get me wrong. I like validation as much as the next guy, and I am not promoting parental irritation or threats. I am not proud of my actions on Wednesday night.

But you can’t argue with the facts, so what do you make of that?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 903)