A short YouTube talk by Ming (Agents of Speech) explaining why many autistic children react negatively to haircuts. The speaker links reactions to sensory sensitivities (noise, razor close to skin) and fear-generalization: a single bad experience or association with tools (scissors/razors) can create lasting defensiveness, and forcing or restraining a child during a cut often worsens future visits.
A lot of the students that I teach, they have problems with cutting the hair because, number one, someone is holding a scissors or razor, and it's very loud, or it's like a razor. It goes, like, right next to the skin. One bad experience, they will be really scared. People on the spectrum, they have a hard time to generalize a general concept that can be used in different situations. But they have the superpower of generalizing the fear, the feeling, whenever they associate it with a tool. So that's the defensiveness that they've learned associated with the object or the event. So therefore, a lot of times when parents bring the kids to cut their hair, what they do is they lock them down, just get it done and over with. And what. This makes it even harder the next time to bring them to the barbershop, because the next time, before they even get there, they can sense that you want to bring them to cut the hair. You're already dragging them, you're already holding them down, and so on. Do not think that you can make them do something just by force.
