Call from nursery : your daughter's hair has been cut off

[emoo777]

DD is 3 1/2 and we have been growing her lovely blonde hair, so that it was easy to put into a ponytail. I have just had a call from nursery to say the children were 'playing hairdressers' and before they saw what was happening her hair had been massively cut off. It was several inches below her neck and now apparentely can't be put into a ponytail and they suggested I book a hair appointment to even it up!?? WTF?! 3 year olds with scissors and not properly supervised? I haven't seen it yet as I have to work ahead of picking up the children. I can't work though as am furious - I don't know whether to cry or shout. What do I say to them when I pick her up? Surely this shouldn't have happened?
Help!!!
xx

Are you all aware that you don't actually need staff in the room at all? Children must be supervised by sight or sound, and usually both. It's legal for a member of staff to leave the room provided they can still hear the children. But you can't hear hair being cut.

Prissy
^Hundreds of kids give each other hair cuts every single day.
I have yet to hear of a three year old that wants to play stabbing or gouging. They are too busy being hairdressers.^

Hahaha that is so true!

Children at nursery do need to use scissors that are effective in cutting paper at least, unfortunately I don't think you could get scissors that would make a decent job of cutting paper (and fabric ?) but not cut hair.

In my experience these amazing child safe plastic scissors with rounded ends do not exist - or if they do would be tremendously frustrating for 3 and 4 year olds to use for their craft activities.

I wonder how many of you have worked in a nursery? I did when young for a short while. We all worked very hard and 99% of the time the supervision was spot on. But you only need a few different ordinary incidents happening at once to mean that you have to srvey the toom generally, rather than walk around and see what is happening close up e.g. sitting with a child on your knee cleaning their bloody knee after they have fallen over outside. You can see if a child is unhappy or being hurt, but if a child is sitting quietly doing something like this, depending on the angle they are sitting, you may not realise until it is too late.

I think the OP has said in her update that the scissors were sharp - not safety scissors.

That would make things more concerning, and I would think she would be perfectly entitled to ask for an explanation, and for the nursery to investigate in those circumstances.

This happened to my friend her daughter did the cutting. The 2 mums are great mates now after a rocky introduction. This is the sort of thing that is traumatic at the time but you look back on it with fondness once they are grown

Scissors need to be sharp to cut paper. So it depends what she means by this.

Both my daughters have been the cutter and the cuttee.

My eldest managed to cut a chunk out of her own hair with a pair of those crappy plastic scissors and me sitting right beside her.

I'd be concerned if they were using really sharp pointy scissors, but those safety scissors seem to be particularly crap at cutting paper, but excellent at hacking off chunks of hair

I would be mad if that happened to DD, that sounds like some haircut!

They are supervised with scissors at Playgroup but can still see how it could happen.
Might have a chat with her about not cutting hair or letting anyone cut hers.

The women that look after her would be pretty upset, I can imagine me having to tell them it's ok don't be upset it's only hair.

god some massive over reactions here!

yes its short but if it was up in a pony tail and cut of and then snipped at it wouldnt actually take that long, literally minutes and in a busy nursery or pre-school these things happen, just as they do at home.

yes metal scissors, my two year old uses a pair but they have curved non pointy ends. but even those plastic safety scissors can cut hair.

it is upsetting for you but your daughter obviously wasnt bothered. it will grow back and yes to a pixie cut!

i would be upset btw...just privately and not let my child see and not blame nursery as these things happen.

I have worked as a nursery nurse and never once did we manage to let a child wander away from the art area with a pair of scissors. Free play is one thing, this is just bad supervision and something that OFSTED would consider to be a child safety issue I think. Apart from the implications of a child walking around the room with a pair scissors, the fact that not one member of staff noticed does not reflect well on the nursery at all.
The children should be sat down at a table while cutting, with a member of staff supervising them. If that member f staff has to move away to deal with another incident then someone else should take over or the scissors should be moved away from the children until the staff member returns. It's common sense and good practice. Letting very young children wander around with scissors is not included in the EYFS as far as I can see..

I would be absolutely gutted. Hair cut 1cm short? That's not just cutting off a ponytail!

I think the concern is mainly that a child has scissors, sharp ones for long enough to do considerable damage to another child's hair, and that if that child had had other intentions, for example playing at being a surgeon, anything could have happened.

Scissors that can cut paper, can cut hair. But they should be of the kind that can not cut fingers.

Just looked at the Early Years Foundation Stage Forum where nursery nurses and managers are talking about issues. And they are saying atht at aged 3 and 4, children should be having independent access to child scissors. And a few talk about hair cutting incidents as well!

In my experience it doesn't happen though Pato. Children sometimes think that cutting hair is fair game but know that hurting each other is unacceptable (on the whole)

My small bridesmaid's brother did a bit of impromptu hairdressing on her, only three days before my wedding! Luckily it was only a chunk out of one side of her hair, and we were able to clip a lock of hair over the patch with a pretty hair slide, so it wasn't noticeable.

It happened because her dad, who was supposedly supervising all the children whilst they were having haircuts at home, let the 6 year old lad and his 5 year old sister make off to the hall with the hairdresser's bag of equipment, and didn't stop to think for a second that there might be sharp, sharp scissors in the bag!!

I do think there are real issues here - as others have said, it is not right that the children were able to take the scissors off into a corner. You can't watch every one of a roomful of children, all of the time, but for that very reason, you should be careful about access to sharp things, so that they can't make off with those to play quietly in the corner.

I also agree with those who have said that the nursery should be paying for the haircut to sort this out, as this happened on their watch. But I do agree with those who have said it is not the end of the world, and her hair will grow back.

I remember a little boy at my playgroup snipping at me with those scissors as I cowered on a chair! No actual damage. Scissors can be sharp enough to cut hair and paper but be unable to inflict much other damage esp not when wielded by a 3 year old. it's the rounded ends!

In your shoes I would feel sad. But I do think it's just one of those things that can happen. I would complain about the lack of supervision (especially as the hair has taken more than an moment to cut) and ask for the nursery to pay you for the hairdresser. Then I'd take your DD for a cute pixie crop and try and play it down for her so she isn't upset unnecessarily.

I'm quite amused by this in one way (not at your expense OP as it must be upsetting for you). A few weeks ago I was the only person questioning the wisdom of doing woodwork in nurseries on a different thread. Pretty much everyone (including my DH) considered me to be uptight in the extreme. In contrast many on this thread don't think 3 year olds should have access to kids scissors. It just goes to show what a broad range of opinion you can have over what is acceptable for children. Ho hum...

wow that is quite a bit of cutting!

Yes, I agree Ghoul with finding it hard to accept the woodwork bench as just a regular fixture of the nursery environment, though I know good nursery classes that have gone in that direction and claim young children respond well to responsibility. I'm not so sure especially when staffing levels are often stretched beyond what would be ideal IMHO.
But equally unrealistic to think every 3 or 4 year old will only use "safety" scissors and with 1:1 support at all times.

Thanks Juggling. You're right about ratios. On the woodwork thread everyone said the children would always be well supervised but this thread shows that supervision can sometimes fail. If the tool available is a pair of children's scissors then an unfortunate haircut is the end result (an acceptable risk I'd say overall). If there are saws and hammers available any, even momentary, lack of supervision could have much more serious consequences.

I would love to see a photo in the interests of science

If a pair of scissors is able to cut paper, then it is able to cut hair.

I don't think there is any form of scissor that is only capable of cutting paper. Some are not really capable of cutting anything at all including paper - though as strands of hair are thinner they would probably still manage that!