When You Can't Fix It
No. 106 - Loving a Child Through Something You Don't Have Answers For
My youngest son has Trichotillomania. It’s a condition that causes him to pull out his own hair, leaving bald patches scattered across his head.
We first noticed it when he was about a year and a half. His hair had been growing in normally, and then one day we started seeing bald spots on the top of his head. It didn’t take long to connect the dots — he was pulling while riding in the car, while drifting off to sleep, whenever he needed to settle himself.
The doctors we’ve seen have been honest with us: there’s no known cause, and there’s no real cure, just ways we can help redirect and distract. Most likely, he developed it as a way to self-soothe as a baby, and it just became part of his routine.
When he was first diagnosed, we shaved his head. The pulling stopped, his hair grew back beautifully, and I let myself believe — really believe — that we had gotten past it. I knew what I’d been told. I knew the reality. But as a parent, you hold onto hope harder than logic sometimes.
Recently, he started pulling again. Even though cutting his hair was the last thing I wanted to do, I knew it was the best way to help him break the cycle. So we did it again.
The hard part this time was that at three, he notices things. He knows his hair looked like his friends’ at school, and now it doesn’t. We told him he’d gotten a cool new haircut for summer, and honestly, he’s taken it in stride in the way only little kids can. I’ve never been more proud of him.
I think about other moms carrying something similar — a diagnosis that arrived without warning and left without a roadmap. A learning difference. Anxiety. A physical condition that no specialist has a tidy answer for. The details are different for all of us, but the feeling is the same: a deep, aching need to understand why, paired with the slow and sometimes painful acceptance that you may never know.
What nobody tells you about parenting is that some of the hardest moments are the quiet ones — sitting with a question that has no answer, loving someone through something you simply cannot fix.
But here’s what I’ve learned: when there isn’t a fix, we show up and we fight harder. We create stability. We find the right environments, the right tools, the right people. We celebrate every small win and learn to measure progress on our own terms. Because “fixing it” was never really the goal — loving our children for the beautifully unique little people they are is.
It’s seeing all the ways each of our children is different and wonderful, and spending our days helping them see those things in themselves too.
🍝 We cooked this sausage ragu last Sunday and it was fantastic. It was a labor of love, but fun to cook on a weekend, and the whole family devoured it.
💻 I discovered this website that lets kids play with the keyboard without fear of messing anything up or accidentally e-mailing your boss.
👡 These Raffia platform sandals are giving me 90’s vibes. They’re perfect for summer with a cute dress or some shorts!
Welcome to new subscribers Elisabeth K. and Sally T., - . I’m so glad you’re here!
Happy Friday, Friends! I hope you all have a great weekend!
From The Modern Motherhood Musings Archive:
So beautifully stated Bri !!! Not being able to fix but giving unconditional love lasts a lifetime .
Beautifully expressed. It is hard to make peace with things you wish your children didn't have to go through. Sounds like you are navigating a challenging and emotional situation with a lot of grace and resilience.