When I was a little girl I loved to draw on myself, and I’ve never known a kid who didn’t feel the same way.  It’s a completely harmless, primal activity and it irks me that well meaning adults tell kids not to do it. Unfortunately, like so many other inherent creative inclinations, it gets nipped in the bud at an early age.

What is so awful about drawing on your body? There are so many things kids could be doing that are far worse, such as playing violent video games.  It amazes me how many peace promoting parents let their kids do that.

It’s also strange that people get upset when kids write on their clothes, yet actually buy them clothes with words and images that turn their kids into walking (free) advertisements for every product that comes down the pike. Huh? I’d rather see my kid’s artwork on their clothes or shoes than some corporate logo any day.

Our son came home from middle school a few years back and told us his teacher yelled at him about a big mandala tattoo he had drawn on his arm with a marker. She was really angry about it, scolding that she never wanted to see anything like that on him again.  He had not been drawing on himself in class. He had done it the night before at home.

I called her up and told her it was OK, that he was allowed to do that.   When asked “Why not?” she realized that there really was no reason.  I think it opened her a bit. She never mentioned it to him again.

I’ve also been cutting my own hair since I was in kindergarten, and believe it falls into the same category.  I WANTED bangs that were asymmetrical. Here I am in elementary school with a self inflicted hair cut.

Our son is now 16 and casually informed us last night that he wanted to shave all or maybe just half of his hair off, as in just one side of his head. I gasped, freaked out, and we yelled back and forth while he browsed the Internet looking at one bizarre shaved haircut after another.  I screamed that if he shaved his hair like that, or that, or please not that,  I would never, ever be seen with him again!

He has the most beautiful thick hair! Oh, I even threatened to leave him home if he shaved it, instead of taking him to and from California on a train this summer, as we have been excitedly planning.  “I’m not riding across the county with a half shaved headed freak of nature” were  just some of the psycho mom words that surfaced out of nowhere and spewed forth.

Of course I SO knew how wrong and unreasonable I was being and  apologized the next day,  agreeing that his side of the argument was right. It IS his hair and he IS free to do whatever he wants with it.

However, I did very lovingly explain that if he did shave it he was going to look really, really ugly, and the girls wouldn’t like it all. That seems to have done the trick! For the time being.