Julie Jay: My three-year-old has finally been convinced that haircuts are not to be feared

“I want to go for a haircut, Mammy,” Ted says when I pick him up from his childminder on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. And who am I to argue with a three-and-a-half-year-old who knows what he wants?

For going on two years now, I have been cutting Ted’s hair, with mixed results. More often than not, we have a very uneven approach to hair trimming, with corporate finance on one side and Electric Picnic on the other being the order of the day. Still, needs must and so Mammy does her best, given that Ted has refused to go to the barber despite persistent cajoling for nearly 24 months.

The fact that I have been so abysmal at haircutting has only compounded my desire to bring Ted to a professional. Quite frankly, his hair looks like it belongs to somebody who has gone through some sort of existential crisis and turned to a pair of Crayola scissors to rectify the problem.

I've been so desperate to convince Ted that the barber’s is not a place to be feared that I have repeatedly enlisted the help of his playground friends. “Tell Ted the man gives you a lollipop,” I whisper, only for Ted to scowl in my direction and announce “I don’t like lollipops”. Every time this has happened, his friends have given me a 'Who is he kidding?' look but have said nothing because they know this about something bigger than lollipops. At the end of the long playschool day, it’s about hair, and it doesn’t get much more serious than that.

I’m not one to talk about hair. As any recent television appearances will tell you, I know nothing about it.

Because I am so bad when it comes to maintaining my own mane, I have always been open to hairdressers dyeing my hair permanent black or experimenting with mullets because who am I to tell these people their business? Sure, telling a hairdresser what to do with your hair would be like telling the dentist how many fillings you want — it’s called deferring to qualifications.

Still, as much as I couldn’t give a fiddlers about what happens to my own locks, Ted’s crown is different. He is the apple of my eye, so the thoughts of anyone hurting or daring to even trim a hair on his head makes me break out into a cold sweat. That said, even by our ragamuffin standards, his curls had been looking increasingly unruly, and so when he says he wants a haircut, we pile into the car before he has a chance to change his contrary three-year-old mind. 

Not for the first time, we get as far as the barber’s door and peer in. It's confirmation season, and the place is pretty busy (and by that I mean there are three teenagers already inside — it’s basically Black Friday by Dingle standards).

“We’ll leave it, Mammy,” Ted says, momentarily overcome by last-minute jitters. Thankfully the barber intervenes and convinces him to stay by pulling on a few stray strands of curly hair.

“Why don’t we just tidy up these few bits?” the barber gently suggests. Given that he is the man holding the scissors, Ted and I nod and take our spots in the waiting area, watching teenager after teenager get their desired look for sacrament season.

When it comes to our turn, Ted happily hops up with the confidence of a man who has done this before. Before I know it, the cape is on, and I plead ignorance when the barber asks why some bits are so much longer than others. “No idea,” I say, and Ted and I exchange a conspiratorial glance that conveys his silence will be rewarded with ice cream.

In the midst of the haircut, Ted’s grandaunt pops in to observe because this is what happens when you are related to half the peninsula. Getting haircuts minus family interventions in West Kerry is about as likely to happen as meeting a partner on Tinder. Not because there aren’t plenty of attractive singletons, there most certainly are, but the problem is you are usually related to them. You know times are tough when you are asking yourself, 'Just how much of a cousin is he, though?' as I often did before you eventually swipe right on the basis that second cousins don’t count.

And so, much like dating in isolated areas can be a bit of a family affair, so too is going for the chop. When his grandaunt spots the curls on the floor her eyes start to water before Ted twirls his hand and informs her he is “getting his haircut” just in case the scissors and chopped hair had left us in any doubt.

Mammy just about manages to hold it together as Ted sits dutifully and moves his head as required. Before my very eyes, he transforms from my little man to an actual little man. Given the fact I still baulk at watching myself back on the telly, it never ceases to amaze me how I have managed to produce such a handsome little fella, made all the more handsome by the fact we can actually see his face now.

The barber has done wonders, and Ted is thrilled with his new look, demanding numerous pics to document the big moment. 

When all is done, and Ted is dethroned, it turns out Mammy is a little short on cash.  (What can I say? It’s my first-ever barber cut, so I came ill-equipped.) So I enlist the help of the grandaunt and our cousin, who runs a shop two doors down, to contribute a couple of euros each. It turns out there are sometimes advantages to being related to half the town, especially when you need people to chip in for stuff.