Photo Courtesy of Twitter
A Minnesota couple is furious at their 12-year-old son’s teacher after discovering she cut his hair without notifying them. The son’s name is not disclosed.
Daetney and Tadow McReynolds gave CBS 4 the rundown of how they found out about their son’s hair. He was nervous about how his parents were going to react.
“And he said, ‘Are you guys going to be mad?’,” Tadow explained. “We were like, ‘For what?'” that’s when their son pulled off his hat and told his parents, “My teacher cut my hair.”
Tadow asked him why his teacher dared to cut his hair, to which he replied that he was upset about his hair and the teacher cut it as a way of helping him.
“I was just really angry, was just mad, and then my head was down,” Tadow said. “And the teacher comes over and said, ‘Let me fix it for you.'”
Tadow and her wife were upset that the teacher felt it would be “helpful” to cut his hair instead of contacting them when their son was emotional.
@hellspawned @tadowbaby Y’all better sue. #fyp #foryou #stitch #afro #hair #blackhair #PassTheBIC ♬ original sound – Tadow Baby
“What made her think this is OK? If you were going to help my child, why wouldn’t you do it in the proper way,” Tadow said. “Commonsense way, the helpful way? By getting him some real help?”
KMOJ Radio host William Baker spoke on the matter with WCCO 4 by stating that a Black person’s hair is their crown.
“It just demoralized him, just take his pride away,” Baker commented. “And now his hair is being put in a situation where people are dictating how he should look.”
To help cheer up the 12-year-old, Baker reached out to Barber Big Lew to give the young boy a fresh haircut. Tadow showed off her son’s new hairdo on Instagram and thanked Baker, the barber, and her community for all of their help.
“I [sic] [and] my family just wanna say THANK YOU for all the support an RIGHT PEOPLE who stepped in,” Tadow wrote. “We never wanted to post that video of our son for views or likes SIMPLY FOR HELP.”
Tadow said that he plans on growing his hair out and is grateful for all of his support.
In Michigan, a similar issue where a biracial girl’s father
noticed his daughter’s hair was uneven and assumed another child did it because it had happened before. But the girl corrected her dad and told him that her teacher had cut her hair. The Mount Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education claimed that the teacher had “good intentions” yet failed to get the parents’ permission or inform them.