"Nash Pulled My Hair"

Babies are notorious hair-pullers, and Nash is no exception. His big sister has yet to grasp the reality that he's a hair-puller by nature and can do nothing about it yet. Yesterday, we had our first major hair-pulling incident with the two kids.

I was sitting on the couch holding Nash, and Shea was cuddling up next to me. Shea was giving Nash kisses and getting in face to make him laugh. It was super cute. In the midst of this play, however, some of Shea's hair managed to wrap itself really nicely around some of Nash's fingers. as Shea pulled away, she screamed because it hurt. Instead of waiting for mom to help untangle her hair from Nash's fingers, she panicked and pulled away even harder. (There's some spiritual lesson in there.) The hair was so tightly wound around Nash's fingers that it hurt him and he started to cry. Shea pulled so hard that a chunk, and I mean a large chunk, of her hair was pulled out from the roots and left in Nash's hand. It was a lot of hair, and I know that had to hurt pretty badly. Now I have two crying children in my lap. Shea sees the large chunk of hair and wails, "My hair. It's broken!"

I manage to get them both calmed down again. Shea's head is just a little bit sore at this point, and she wants some justice. She tells me, "Nash pulled my hair. He need time out." She then points to Nash and says again, "Time out!" I chuckle and wonder how I should handle this one. Shea thinks that Nash has done something wrong. She doesn't get that as a four-month-old, he has no idea that pulling hair causes pain and that time-out will serve no purpose with him. Now, I could attempt to explain this to her, and she wouldn't get it either. I could ignore her, and she'd feel like Nash got away with something. I don't think that would be wrong, but I chose the easiest route. We were about to leave anyway. I put Nash in his car seat and placed him in the corner and said that he was in time out. Shea felt vindicated. Nash was experiencing some punishment for hurting her.

Just then, Jon walked through the front door, and Shea ran to him and tattled, "Nash pull my hair. Nash in time out." She then went to find her hair to show to Jon. We left for daycare, and I thought all had been forgotten. Shea, however, was still talking about it during the evening. She again recounted the story to her Daddy about how Nash pulled her hair and got sent to time out. She again looked for her broken hair to show to her Daddy.

Later that evening, Nash was in his exersaucer, and Shea was making faces at him as he squealed with glee. She then got really serious. She leaned over and got in his face and sternly told him, "Nash, don't pull my hair, okay?" Despite her Daddy's attempt to explain that when we forgive somebody, we don't constantly bring up what he did to hurt us , she will be talking about the hair pulling incident for a long time.