When I was 6, I had waist length hair which was plaited twice a day - once in the morning, and once at night - by my mother. I was sent to stay with my grandparents - my mother's parents - for the summer holidays, that year. Six weeks later, when my mother returned to collect me, she found me with a short hairstyle (not quite short back and sides, looking at the photos, but not far off it). Why? Because on the second day of the holiday, my grandfather had endured enough of my screaming as soon as anyone waved a hairbrush in my line of sight, and taken me to the barbers to have it cut off (he had it saved, tied up with my satin hair ribbons, in a plastic bag for my mother, though). Why did I scream?
Because my mother used to beat me with the wooden hairbrush for "not sitting still", for "having tangles" (although as my hair was dragged back into the 1970s version of The Croydon Facelift twice a day, and never unplaited, I don't know how it tangled!), for crying...
That was abuse.
Many years later, I'm still grateful to my grandfather for what he did. And have never been able to stand my hair going past chin-length (at the moment, I'm actually bald because I shaved my hair off). It upset my father when he saw me, but simply made my mother angry - because she knew she'd lost one of the ways to torture me twice a day.
It is just hair. It will grow back. And perhaps, even though you're not privy to it, there was another reason other than nits which caused it to be shaved. I've been told I cried when my grandfather's barbar cut my plaits off - although that would have been because I was terrified of my mother's reaction! Maybe... just maybe... someone wanted to stop this girl with long hair from being whacked with a hairbrush every time she - as a 6 year old - naturally shifted through boredom, or the pain of her hair being brushed by someone that wasn't her?