Hat Head

The Little man has the most amazing head of blonde curls. Even I, the proud mother, gets sick of hearing people go on about the hair. "All the girls are going to looove youuuu!" they say. Not to mention the touching... constant touching... I mean, I touch them all the time, I love them. But at the moment they are mine to touch. I will touch them until he says no, but other people? It's a bit like touching pregnant bellies... it's just not OK.

Anyway, on any given day, especially at the moment as it is really long, his hair looks like this:
And the new front teeth are coming along nicely too by the way, growing incredibly fast.

So, he's in the bathroom getting ready for his bath, when I hear:

"Muuuum? I need privacy. Now!"

Oh dear! I think to myself as I wonder what atrocity is about to be shoved in my face this time. Could be anything?

I walk in, he pushes me aside and shuts the door with gusto: "I don't want The Middle Man to see this. It's just terrible! Look!" and he takes off his peak cap which he has been wearing all afternoon.

"This is a problem. This is what happens every single day after lunch when we get back to the classroom. This is what I look like and I can't take it anymore. I need to know how to fix it!"

This is this:
Severe hat head.

I remember it sooo clearly from my own childhood. I was always told I looked so nice in hats... "You should wear hats more often, they really suit you." but nobody knew that deep inside I hid a tearful secret. I got hat head every time I wore a hat. People with curly hair suffer terribly from hat head. Thinking I had put it to rest and in a box in my past, I hadn't thought about hat head for a long time and now here is this little darling standing in front of me begging for help.

"Mmmmm.... I used to get hat head too when I was a little girl. I used to do this (fluff up my hair) and this (head upside down) or this (put water on my hair and scrunching like mad). There's lots of things you can for hat head. It's a bit like bed head, but it's at a different time of the day."

We played around for a while until he was satisfied that he could do it himself at school, and then he jumped in the bath and washed those curls till they almost fell off his head... shampoo is such great stuff when you're a kid and it's the first bottle that your mum has actually let you use yourself, isn't it?