What do you do when your baby pulls your hair?

[mrsjuan]

DD (6months) is at the delightful hair pulling phase (or, more accurately, entwining hair around her little fingers then lurching about taking half your scalp with her and giggling phase). It really hurts!

I have tried distracting her with something else (but only hair will do), ignoring (makes no difference, hard to ignore the pain!) and putting her down (she cries).

MIL says we ought to start saying 'no' to her. Surely this won't do much?

Do we just grin and bear it or has anyone found a magical solution?

prise out of fingers and tie it back

you can say no but don't expect it to help or work for about another year

I have always said no to my ds when he does this. Now 13 months and still loves to do it. I don't say it sharply or aggressively, I just say no and untwine the hair. My reasoning for saying no even when he was tiny was that I think it will happen for a while (his favourite time to do it is when bfeeding) and eventually he will understand. He will probably understand before I know he does, iyswim, and it seems mean to start saying no, just because I know he can now understand it, when I haven't been saying no for months before.

I found a ponytail reduced the frequency - though they can still grab any that gets loose, at least it's usually not half your scalp that gets yanked on!

Beyond that, not much at 6 months - they just don't have enough understanding. You can start with saying no, but it'll be a long while before she's able to connect it to anything, so don't hold your breath...

Tying it back doesn't help! She manages to hook her fingers under it IYSWIM

Can't see the point of saying no when she won't understand so will just continue prising.

Considering shaving my head but I suppose that would be a bit of a drastic solution

I feel your pain - literally!! DS is 7 months old and his favourite hobby is yanking my hair (even though I have it tied back). He grabs a handful near my scalp and pulls it sooooooooo hard!! He's also started pulling my fringe too.

I'm waiting with bated breath to see if anyone has any magical solution that doesn't involve shaving my head...

Even with my hair up, I had the same thing and had to get a fringe as DS had pulled at the temples so much it was all tufty. I wouldn't bother with "no" - at 6 months they don't understand and now at almost 11 months, DS thinks it's a hilarious game. He pulls, I say no, he laughs, I laugh (try very hard not to), yay mummy likes having her hair pulled - and repeat.

One of those things I'm afraid.

Shave it all off! I did - ergo, nothing for DS to pull I should say that I'd been thinking about getting rid of my hair for a while, and that was just the little extra push I needed ...

The only thing I'll say is get lots of hats. I find that, now we're going towards winter, I shiver like crazy even when I'm all wrapped up in layers