Hair Dryer Monster

Our son has a healthy mop of curly hair that can’t go untended to because it gets matted with spit and other crap babies manage to get in there. We have to wash his hair quite a bit. It’s not that big of a deal; just an extra step during bath time a few times a week. In fact, he seems to like getting his hair washed. What he doesn’t like is getting it dried.

Something about the blow dryer scares the living you-know-what out of Dmitri. It could be the sound. The “WHIIIRRRRR” is pretty normal to me and my wife, but it’s loud as hell for a baby. Not to mention the blow dryer makes that sound AND spits out hot air. Oh, and the diffuser we put on the end makes the hair dryer look like it has Cthulu tentacles. Yeah, all in all, it’s pretty scary. If a contraption like that sized in proportion to what it is to Dmitri came at me, I’d cry, too.

The weird thing is Dmitri’s blow dryer fear manifested itself only recently. We’ve been drying his hair since he was a newborn, and he didn’t mind before. He just sat there quietly as I ran the blow dryer. Then a few weeks ago he started crying when we turned the blow dyer on. Not just a normal cry, either, but a fearful one. A look we’d never seen before — terror.

We’ve tried many things to get Dmitri to acclimate to the blow dryer. We’ve showed it to him before turning it on. We’ve tried using a lower setting. Nothing works. His expression the second I turn it on is still one of terror that screams, “WHY ARE YOU PUTTING THAT CRAZY HOT AIR SPITTING NOISE MAKING THING WITH THE WEIRD MOUTH NEXT TO MY FACE!??!!”

My wife thinks Dmitri’s terror is the result of a “leap,” which is a fancy way to say “developmental stage.” At six months old, the world changes dramatically for babies. They can perceive and understand more. Before this leap, he must have lacked the mental capacity to truly understand the blow dryer’s terrifying nature. Now he knows it’s an evil thing that blows hot air and can cause him pain. But more than that, and it’s being put in the not-so-capable hands of dad.

Terrifying indeed.