What to Do When Someone Touches Your Child's Hair Without Asking

Give your child one short sentence they can say without thinking — “Please don’t touch my hair” — and practise it out loud until it is automatic. Children rarely freeze because they lack the words; they freeze because they have never rehearsed them. Back the sentence with your own visible support so your child knows the boundary is theirs to hold.

Why this lands harder than it looks

To an adult reaching out, it may feel like a compliment. To a child, it is a stranger's hands on their head without warning. The message a child takes from it is that their body is available for other people's curiosity — and that they are expected to be gracious about it.

Children pick up the subtext quickly. What they usually don't have is a response.

Give them one sentence, and rehearse it

Not a speech. One sentence, short enough to say while startled:

"Please don't touch my hair."

Practise it in the car, at dinner, as a game. Take turns being the person who reaches out. The point is not to teach the words — your child already knows them — but to make saying them automatic, so the sentence arrives before the freeze does.

Some children prefer a softer version: "I don't like that, please stop." Let your child choose their own wording. A sentence they picked is a sentence they will use.

They are also allowed to say nothing

This matters. If your child freezes and says nothing, they have not failed. Tell them so explicitly, because otherwise a child will add self-blame on top of the original discomfort.

Offer non-verbal options too: stepping back, putting a hand up, turning away, or coming to find you. All of these are complete responses. A child who knows they have several exits feels less trapped than one who believes there is only one correct thing to say.

Back them up out loud

If you are present, say something yourself. "She doesn't like her hair touched" takes two seconds and does something important: it shows your child that the boundary is real, that an adult will enforce it, and that they will not be scolded for being rude.

If you stay quiet to avoid awkwardness, your child learns the adult's comfort outranks their own.

Talk about it afterwards, briefly

Ask what happened and how it felt. Don't oversteer. Two questions work well:

• "What did you want to say?"
• "What do you want to say next time?"

This turns an uncomfortable moment into rehearsal for the next one, without making it a bigger event than your child feels it was.

The message underneath

What you are really teaching is that your child's body belongs to them, that they may set a limit without justifying it, and that being polite does not require being available. That lesson generalises far beyond hair.

My Day was written for exactly this moment — a child finding their voice when someone comments on or reaches for their hair, and learning that speaking up is allowed.

Common questions