A Holiday Gift for Locks of Love
As PunditGirl hits her 10th birthday in this holiday-heavy, gift-giving crazy month, we've been talking more about the idea giving rather than getting. As parents, we struggle to find the balance between letting our children enjoy receiving gifts at the holidays and at the same time making sure that we can teach them about giving to others -- and not just giving things that money can buy.
Our fourth-grader has been obsessed with her hair and growing it as long as possible since she was in kindergarten. When she got old enough to wash and care for her hair by herself, we told her she could make the decision about how long (or short) she wanted it to be.
Little did we know just how long it would get!
When it became clear that we were in for a hair growing marathon, we started talking with our daughter about Locks of Love, the organization that accepts donations of hair to make wigs for children who have lost theirs as a result of disease or treatment of a disease. PunditGirl seemed interested, but at ages seven and eight, she wasn't interested enough to cut her ever-growing ponytail.
We didn't push it. It's her hair, after all. And if you can't enjoy having extra long hair when you're an elementary school girl, when can you?
But something clicked in the past weeks for our ten-year-old -- I suspect it had more to do with other girls getting their hair cut than a charitable epiphany. She was adamant, though, that it was time for that hair cut NOW! She was excited, but anxious at the same time. She wanted shorter hair and was on board with sending what turned out to be a 12 inch ponytail to Locks of Love. But I had a sense she still didn't get what this gift really meant.
Later that afternoon, we headed out for a matinee and, as luck would have it, one of the trailers was for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. The clip featured many children with no hair -- children who were completely bald. I leaned over in the dark and whispered, " Maybe one of those children will get your hair for a wig of their own. These are the kind of children who will be really happy to have your gift."
It took a moment for her to take her eyes off those children. When she did, she turned to me with a solemn look I've rarely seen on her face. She nodded. I could see in her eyes that she finally understood what she had done that day and what her beautiful, smooth ponytail might mean for another child.
It was one of those parenting moments we all wish for, but don't often get -- seeing our sons and daughters truly understand that there are children whose lives aren't as easy as their own and that even ten-year-olds can make a difference in someone else's life through a small act of giving.
When she's not beaming about how grown-up her fourth-grader is these days, you can find Joanne getting all political at her place, PunditMom.
