in ,

Parent Has ‘No Sympathy’ After 10-Year-Old Daughter Cuts Her Own Bangs And Hates How It Looks

veronka & cia/Getty Images

We’ve all seen at least one of those cringe-worthy videos featuring someone trying to cut their hair at home and failing miserably at it.

Some of us could have starred in a few videos ourselves, side-eyed the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITA) subReddit.

Redditor Ill-Construction-660 had talked at length with her ten-year-old daughter about her hair being thin and how having bangs probably wasn’t the best look for her.

So when her daughter didn’t listen and decided to go for it anyway, the Original Poster (OP) didn’t exactly have the most sympathy for her.

She asked the sub:

“AITA for having no sympathy for my child after she didn’t listen?”

There was a hairstyle that the OP’s daughter really wanted to have.

“My 10-year-old daughter wanted bangs for a long time because a friend of hers recently had her hair cut and had bangs cut and it ended up being very cute.”

“My daughter has beautiful hair, it’s very long, but it’s thin.”

“I had my cousin, who is a hairdresser who actually has an area of focus on kids’ haircuts, consult and she said that if we cut bangs into my daughter’s hair it wouldn’t look right due to how thin her hair is.”

The OP tried to step in and help her daughter out.

“I normally let my daughter have a say in the choices she makes regarding clothes and hair, but on this one, I put my foot down because I know it won’t look good and she is going to wind up unhappy.”

“My cousin also uploaded a photo of my daughter to FaceApp and showed me what she would look like with bangs and it just wasn’t a good look (I know FaceApp isn’t 100% accurate but it was pretty close in this regard).”

The OP’s daughter decided she knew what was best, however.

“The day before yesterday, my daughter told me she was going to take some alone time in our bathroom.”

“It was only after she’d been in the bathroom a while that I noticed the scissors I keep in the kitchen were missing. These are big meat scissors.”

“And then I heard her in the bathroom crying, so I made her open the door and she was hunkered with her back to me, sobbing, and I saw a hunk of hair in the sink.”

“She had watched a TikTok compilation of people cutting their hair and trying to do bangs!”

“It was not a good result. The hair doesn’t lay flat, she cut very unevenly, and she cut too short (using your index finger place the tip in the center part and go down to the first bend and that’s how short she cut).”

“I really didn’t know what to say, so I made sure hadn’t hurt herself with the scissors, which she didn’t.”

“I looked at her hair and realized I wasn’t going to be able to even it up myself, so I called my cousin, who came over and made the cut even but it required cutting shorter, and now her hair is f**ked up.”

The OP didn’t have much sympathy for her.

“My daughter is mortified and doesn’t want to go into public now.”

“She keeps begging me to fix it even though I’ve explained it to her, and my cousin explained it can’t be fixed.”

“So I told her, ‘This is what happens when you don’t listen. You made the mistake yourself. You hid in the bathroom because you knew it was wrong. You have to live with the consequences and wait for it to grow.'”

The OP’s husband called her out on her attitude. 

“My husband says I’m being very cold and unsympathetic and that our daughter is 10, she didn’t know any better, she was just learning and doing what kids do.”

“I feel that she knew exactly what she was doing and that it was wrong, hence her hiding from me.”

“My husband said that if I had just taken her to the salon and had her hair cut, then she wouldn’t have done it herself.”

“My daughter hates the bangs and says my cousin was right that it wouldn’t look good, so if I had taken her to get it done, then she’d be blaming me. We’re at a stalemate.”

“AITA?”

Fellow Redditors weighed in:

  • NTA: Not the A**hole
  • YTA: You’re the A**hole
  • ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
  • NAH: No A**holes Here

Some agreed that the daughter knew she shouldn’t have been cutting her own hair.

“I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of the Y T A’s here are not parents or have really young children.”

“10 is old enough to face the consequences of your actions. She snuck into the bathroom she knew she shouldn’t be doing what she did.”

“NTA. Hair will grow back. There are lots of stupid things kids do that cannot be fixed.” – KODO5555

“If everyone, including a professional, is telling her that bangs won’t work for her, she should not, at 10 years old, be deciding she knows better. If she does, and does it herself, the natural consequences are something she can live with and maybe listen to people who know what they’re talking about next time.” – TA122278

“At 10 years old, she would just end up blaming the mom for allowing her to get bangs.”

“She only wanted them because someone else had them.”

“A literal professional told her the style wasn’t gonna work.” – calliopegrey

Others thought that the OP should have given her daughter more agency in her hairstyle. 

“Nope.”

“Parent to now grown children.”

“OP is an a**hole for ‘putting her foot down’ about bangs in the first place.”

“Kids should have agency in their appearance as much as possible. They were bangs. So what if OP thought they would look bad? Her daughter is old enough to try new styles and decide for herself if she likes them or not.”

“OP should have OKed the bangs from the get-go and given her kid the chance to do them properly or to speak with a professional herself and make her own decisions about her hairstyle.” – BlockAcceptable5542

“Let’s get some perspective here. This is a VERY low consequence scenario. Those are the kinds of decisions you start to allow kids to make. That is how they learn. OP should have given her daughter agency to do so, with full understanding that it’s her own decision.”

“Then, you have a weird haircut, a few funny awkward photos, and laugh about it when you’re 30. Spoken by a woman who sported a mushroom cut and a mullet proudly as a child.”

“Pick your battles as a parent. YTA, gently. Just learn, and laugh with her about it eventually.” – rlikesbikes

“Such a low-stakes issue, makes it a good opportunity to give her that freedom to make the choice. Instead, everyone focused on how they thought she’ll look being more important. Hair clips exist, she’ll be fine.”

“As if everyone who was a kid before 2000 didn’t have a butt ugly haircut at some point anyway.” – Emergency-Fox-5982

“I let my kids make low-impact decisions daily. Sometimes I don’t agree with those choices but I still let them make them.”

“I always remind them that they are responsible for their choices and have to take the consequences good and bad. I refuse to be blamed or listen to them complain because they made the decision.”

“Most of the time they surprise me and it ends up working out for them.” – sassyandsweer789

Some also thought the daughter deserved much more sympathy.

“Remember that this is the beginning of what she’ll be doing as a teen.”

“How do you want her to expect you to respond when she realizes that she f**ked up? Do you want her to feel like she can come to you and ask for help or that she is alone in the world with her mistake?”

“You can’t fix it for her, but you can offer her unconditional love and say that you’ll always be there for her when she makes a mistake.” – EvaTidalWave

“Letting her get bangs or not is not the issue, and not where OP’s and her husband’s parenting differ.”

“OP is withholding support and affection from her child because OP is more concerned about being in control and being right than her child needing reassurance.”

“You can still. Learn it’s wrong to do things behind your parents’ back while also understanding if you do f**k up your parents will still love you and try to help.” – stereo_selkie

“You are raising an adult, not a child. They will not be a child forever. The goal is to create a functional adult. So your decisions need to come from a place of ‘What will create the most functional adult?'”

“Refusing to allow children to make decisions, especially over something as insignificant as their hairstyle, does not create the most functional adult. Therefore it is not good parenting.”

“Your job as the parent is to be the training ground so that they can learn. When you never let them make their own decisions, you take that away from them, and I’ve seen that go horribly wrong before.” – lordmwahaha

While the subReddit could sympathize that the haircut might not look good right now, they were thoroughly divided on how the OP had handled the situation.

A few agreed that the daughter had been sneaky about the haircut and now was living with the consequences.

Others could agree with that, but they emphasized that the OP could have created a safe space for her daughter to experiment with her look and feel comforted when she didn’t like the style, rather than facing punishment and judgment over something simple she wanted to try.

Written by McKenzie Lynn Tozan

McKenzie Lynn Tozan has been a part of the George Takei family since 2019 when she wrote some of her favorite early pieces: Sesame Street introducing its first character who lived in foster care and Bruce Willis delivering a not-so-Die-Hard opening pitch at a Phillies game. She's gone on to write nearly 3,000 viral and trending stories for George Takei, Comic Sands, Percolately, and ÜberFacts. With an unstoppable love for the written word, she's also an avid reader, poet, and indie novelist.