Last week, one of my fabulous sisters-in-law asked Andy via text how I get Tony to sit still for haircuts. The shortest version of an answer to that would be: I don’t. I can’t. He can’t. His sensory differences are far too profound. But, I promised a post on what we are doing, so here it is 😉
This is another area where we have had to coax a gentle evolution of progress from a terror and loathing that makes a calmer antipathy seem warmly inviting. In a world ordered to Tony’s preferences, his luscious locks would exist in a nature-defying static suspension around the length Ian Astbury sported in the “Firewoman” and “Edie” videos. No growth, no cuts, long enough to avoid irritating prickles on the back of his shoulders, and short enough not to be sat upon.
For the record, I don’t have any sort of problem with his hair being any length he chooses (after all, those silky tresses surely belong to him rather than me), but since hair will continue to grow against his every wish, trimming of some kind will need to be involved. And, for a host of other reasons- from medical to potential future job grooming standards- I think it prudent that he is able to tolerate various lengths and trimming methods.
As best I can tell, our little man’s main difficulties with haircuts fall into sensitivities that he has in his hearing and his skin. Trimmers, especially the cheaper variety, are pretty noisy and amplified to his sensitive hearing in a way I can’t fully appreciate, having never experienced the world from the vantage of his nervous system. There are secondary issues related to his risk assessment- if he’s scared or a snip painfully tugged his scalp, he will swat without any thought to the damage to his fingers possible from the scissor blades.
This was another area where the earlier manifestations of his sensitivities were severe enough to provoke both hysterics and the strongest “fight or flight” response he was capable of. In his second year, well-meaning commentators suggested a small assortment of tactics coupled with assurances of guaranteed success that were unfortunately ineffectual. These were often already things we had been trying without any degree of symptom moderation, such as putting on a movie or offering him a reward when the haircut was complete.
What we have been doing has involved five years worth of steady work and progress. The descriptions that could be produced from that length of time would generate an epic post (lengthwise anyways), so I’m going to skimp on some of the details for now and give a more basic outline of the desensitization progression that was designed in conjunction with Tony’s fantastic ABA team.
We started out just requiring him to look at the trimmers or the scissors. When he did this, he was immediately rewarded with something that made him happy. Once he was able to do that calmly, he was asked to briefly touch the item. For the trimmers, there were two phases of both of these steps, where he was asked to look and touch first while they were unplugged and off, progressing to completing both actions while turned on. Initially, he would move to the other side of the room as soon as the sound began vibrating out of the trimmers, and there were occasions where he managed to throw them rather destructively towards the floor. Currently, I sometimes have Hannah touch the trimmers first so that Tony can see that this bravery is required of others too. For this reason, I also like to trim Andy’s hair where Tony can witness every aspect.
Then, once our son was able to stay calm touching the item for 80% of the time, we would progress to working on the haircut. In the beginning, haircuts were spread out over days. Initially we only did one trim or cut per reward, and capped our total attempts at 10 per day. A second person was necessary to help guard from attempts to bat away the scissors once the snipping sound hit his ears, as this could be injurious to everyone. I got a nasty cut once pulling back to avoid his finger. He was fine, I had a half inch v-shaped laceration because the hand I used to block his was quick enough to intercept him…but not to avoid the blades. Between each trim, he was allowed to run or watch TV, and we would put three to five minutes in between each attempt.
As he began tolerating all of this better, we would move up to requiring two or three snips per reward, and adding extra attempts to each day. There was a period of time where we did not use the trimmers at all because we were having much more success at maintaining calmness with the scissors. The past two hair cuts have involved longer amounts of trimmer work with a greater degree of success and equanimity than we’ve ever had. But, there was very little sitting to be had through all of it. Below, I’ve pictures a few different stages of the most recent haircut.
Sometimes I push a bit too hard. For the haircut I was working on with him a couple of weeks ago, Tony seemed to be doing great until he wasn’t. What I do when this happens is I pull back to using the scissors, and I wait until he’s tolerating that contentedly for a few cuts before asking him to communicate if he’d like to be all done with the haircut for the day. I feel that it is important for him to associate ending activities with communication in the absence of a meltdown.
For the past several months I have been doing his haircuts by myself, except for Hannah’s involvement modeling the handling of a trimmer. And, this last haircut took me only two days of work, with the first day having a series of snips spread out over two hours. While I do manage to get his hair trimmed, no amount of generosity could get most of the resulting styles described as good. This past one was better than most.
I also had to grow a thicker skin to the comments and questions that would happen during those haircuts that spanned several days to accomplish. Let’s just say the first two or three days it looked like a weed-whacker was involved in attempting an incredibly bad replication of Cyndi Lauper’s fabulously asymmetrical 80’s hairstyles.
We’re a long way off from the day where Tony can tolerate a fully conventional haircut session, but our next step is going to involve having Emily do some of the trimming so that he can start to adjust to other people as we continue to progress…one snip at a time.
