No One's Having A Worse 'Back To School' Week Than These Parents

One little girl gave her parents a special “back to school” surprise

Kids giving each other haircuts is a tale as old as time. If you were never the victim of a sibling’s busy scissor hands, chances are good you were the tiny stylist in training. Usually the only fallout is a missing chunk of bangs or a few uneven pieces in the front, but one big sister took the DIY kiddie haircut all the way to the limit.

Oh, and did we mention it happened right before school started? Because of course it did.

Related: 18 Cute And Easy Kids Hairstyles That Will Make You Feel Like A SuperParent

Chris Cate is dad to nine-year-old Ava and her younger brothers — Cameron and Colton, ages six and four. He’s also the voice behind The ParentNormal, a blog and podcast about the more humorous aspects of parenting — such as one kid totally butchering their sibling’s hair. Which is funny eventually, but probably not at first.

You simply need to see this to believe it.

“So it happened in our house, and less than a week before school starts, of course. I’ve seen it happen on so many tv shows, but thought it wouldn’t happen to us. And yet, here we are. My daughter gave a haircut to both of her brothers. The only good news is they didn’t return the favor for her,” he writes.

That’s right — young Ava got a case of the itchy scissors and tried out her skills on both of her brothers.

Oh. My. God. Those layers.

Those bangs. Or lack thereof.

Cate tells Scary Mommy that all was quiet while the big chop was going down. He thought the kids might be occupied by their new hermit crabs.

He thought wrong.

“Cameron comes running out of the bedroom, and says, ‘I’m looking sharp!’ I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. It looked like maybe he had slicked his hair back with gel or something. But then he tells me his sister Ava cut his hair,” he explains.

On closer inspection, Cate realizes that Cameron has barely any hair in the front along with big gaps missing on top of his head. He quickly realized after grilling Ava, who claims the boys “begged” for their new do’s, that Colton must have gotten the at-home snip too. Though he says the younger boy’s hair wasn’t quite as bad as his brother’s.

Then, Cate asks where all that hair went.

In one of the boys’ closets, of course. He says there were “clumps of hair on the floor and the scissors still laying there.”

Off to the hairdresser they went.

“Cameron’s hair had to be buzzed all over because there were too many spaces where the hair was cut all the way off,” says Cate. “Colton’s didn’t need to be entirely buzzed, but there’s still some evidence the haircut incident took place, but it’s not as big of a disaster as it was before the professional fixed it.”

With school starting next week, the timing wasn’t great, but Cameron’s actually a huge fan of the buzz. He asked if he could keep getting his hair done that way and when his dad told him maybe next summer, he had a better idea. “He replied he would just have Ava cut his hair again so he could get it buzzed,” says Cate.

Sounds about right for kid logic. But Cate takes comfort in knowing he’s far from alone in this struggle.

“The reaction on Facebook and Instagram has been crazy,” he tells us. “Apparently everybody has had this happen to them or know somebody who has done it. So I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened in our house.”

Luckily, the dad is keeping his sense of humor intact.

“The whole thing is too funny for me to be too upset. It just better not happen again.”