My Mother-In-Law Cut My Son's Hair Without Permission While I Was At Work. She Didn't Know Why He Had Been Growing It For Eight Months.

Noah made the decision in February on the bus ride home.

His best friend Marcus had told him quietly, with the specific directness of a seven-year-old who has been given difficult information and is trying to figure out what to do with it, that the doctors had said his hair was going to fall out from the medicine.

Marcus had said: I don't want everyone to stare at me.

Noah had said: then I'll grow mine long so we both look different. Then nobody will stare at just you.

He had come home and told me what he had decided.

I had looked at my son for a moment.

Then I had said: that's a very good idea, Noah.

He had been growing it since February.

By October it was to his shoulders.

He had told his teachers, the school secretary, the nurse who did the annual vision screening, the soccer coach, and the man at the coffee shop who always gave him a hot chocolate when I stopped in on Thursday mornings.

He told everyone who asked.

He said: I'm growing it for my friend Marcus because Marcus is doing chemotherapy and I don't want him to be the only one who looks different.

He was seven years old and he had decided this in February and he had not wavered once.

My mother-in-law Patricia had been commenting since March.

The first time she said: he looks unkempt.

My husband David said: his hair is not up for discussion, Mom.

The second time she said: children need structure and that includes their appearance.

David said: we've made our position clear.

The third time she said nothing directly to us. She said it to Noah. She told him his parents were doing him no favors by letting him look this way.