Yesterday SW agreed to let me cut his hair.

It’s probably been over a year since his last hair cut. This is one of those things that has been a constant battle with him, since he was a little tiny thing. In his toddler days, he slept soundly enough that I literally did the cutting while he was asleep many times. (That goes right along with the fingernail fairy, who comes along and does nail trimming in ones sleep. She still visits occasionally today, when things get desperate.)

SW will tell me he can feel the individual hairs getting cut, and can feel the nails being trimmed as well. There were days in the back yard during sessions with the hair clippers when I was sure the neighbors would call the police thinking we were beating him. He would scream and moan and cry that loud. I’m sure what he was feeling is actually in his scalp, despite how gentle I always have tried to be, but that’s not how he tells it. I try to explain to him that people don’t feel it when hair gets cut, it doesn’t work that way. He is always quick to assure me that while people in general do not, he on the other hand does. He’s different, he’s not like everyone else, and I should remember that.

And that is the rub, isn’t it? Someone with Autism is just wired differently. You can’t assume that what is true for everyone else is true for them. And both those individuals, and all of us around them, would have a much easier time of it if we would just remember and accept that.

So this morning SW says he did not wake up with a headache for the first time in a long while. Shampooing went very quick and easy last night as well. I am sincerely hoping that he remembers the days and days of ease he gets from short hair outweigh the twenty minutes or so of discomfort from the hair cut. Yes I am very much hoping that.