Blog Post #3

Barber Russell Fredrick and his team at A-1 Kutz create a new kind of discipline for children who are misbehaving.  This barber provides a Benjamin Button Special where the child’s hair will be styled in resemblance of a balding senior citizen in order to create unwanted attention and humiliation upon the child.  This public shaming is supposed to teach kids a lesson since they cannot use physical punishment as they did in the past, so instead they find an alternative by making the child learn their lesson through their an unwanted appearance.

In my opinion I simply find this the meanest thing ever to do to your child.  Yes, it is a way of disciplining children but you cannot involve their appearance in order for them to learn a lesson.  These children have insecurities or insecurities that are evolving, enforcing this punishment can possibly make it worse.  This punishment can also lead their child to experience bullying due to their senior look, which would take a while to grow out!  Save them the embarrassment because obviously no one wants to have this image. Why would parents want to put their children in this situation? I think this idea is just cruel!

This situation is similar to what I recently read.  I read an article about a mom shaving her daughters hair as punishment for lying to her (http://www.bakersfield.com/columnists/lois-henry/2011/08/22/shaving-child-s-head-isn-t-abuse-seriously.html).  I understand that they are learn what they have done wrong but what has their appearance done to cause the problem they did, why does their appearance need to be punished.  Parents should let their kid learn from their mistakes not punish them in a cruel way. Why must their parents ruin their child’s appearance? This just makes the child so upset and insecure. Even if you look at these other pictures of parents shaving off their child’s head as punishment you can see how unhappy the child is.