Child Behavior

by Sandy
(USA)

Back in September my seven year old daughter cut her hair drastically. When she looked in the mirror and noticed how much she had cut she was embarrassed and sad. She had long bangs/hair. She cut very, very short bangs and cut one side of her hair completely short.

With that said, at the end of November my daughter was playing with her seven year old cousin and decided to cut her hair. A short piece and a long piece. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable. Now not to get too much into family dynamics here, my sis and bro-in law were livid, aggressive, and hurtful to us over the situation.

They called this 'malicious behavior' siting that my daughter was traumatized and shameful over cutting her own hair, wanting to cause the same shame and trauma to her cousin. They both were involved and one hid the scissors and one hid the hair. The incident was found out the next day by the parents because the children did not 'fess up'.

I do feel responsible, however, I defended the fact that my child, with no prior incidents and gets along with her cousin extremely well, did not act in a malicious manner.

My question is what do seven years olds 'act on' when they do this? When asked why she did this, my daughter just says, 'I don't know'.