PA
Floppy hair on boys is all the rage – just look at the mop on pop wannabe Frankie Cocozza – but five year-old Rean Carter has taken an aversion to the barber's to a whole new level.
The primary schoolboy has NEVER had his hair cut.
As the father of a seven year-old boy who refuses to have his sheep-like locks shorn, I fear my own boy might be heading the same way.
But unlike Rean's mum, I am desperate to take the scissors to it.
Not because he looks like a girl – but because he looks like X-Factor reject Frankie i.e. ridiculous.
But at last it seems that Rean's mum Leanne Smith has finally seen sense after her boy demanded a trip to the hairdresser's.
"When Rean was born he had a lovely little curl of golden hair at the back of his head," said Leanne, 30, from Hylton Castle, Sunderland.
"I just could never bear to get it cut, not even his fringe.
"Now it flows all the way down his back to his bum and is very beautiful and soft.
"When we go out he is often mistaken for a little girl - people say 'Isn't she gorgeous' - but it has never bothered him; he just laughs.
"It was only when he joined school and had to have it tied back in a ponytail, for health and safety, that some of the other little boys began to make fun.
"They said he could not play with them because he looked like a girl.
I've already cried at the thought of him having it cut, and will cry again when it actually happens.
To soften the blow, Rean is having his pride and glory lopped off for charity and has already raised £82 in sponsorship from friends, relatives, and classmates in his reception class at Grange Park Primary school, in Sunderland.
The money will be donated to Sunderland Royal Hospital children's unit, where Ryan was admitted for a week-and-a-half in 2010, suffering from impetigo.
Mum-of-two Leanne said the shorn locks would then be donated to a cancer charity.
She and partner Neil Carter, 48, have never measured exactly how long their son's tresses are, but their son has told them they're too long.
"Rean gets his curly hair from Neil's side of the family," said Leanne. "He said he wants it shorter, and spiky on top, like his friend Joseph.
"The barber will be under strict instructions not to take too much off. There will be no use of clippers.
"I've told him that he will have it cut by Easter or if not by then during the Easter holidays when he's off.
"I don't wish he was a little girl and I don't see him that way, though I would love a daughter. "He is a proper little boy who likes Scooby Doo and cars and is getting into football.
"His little brother Regan, who is two, has the same hair. I'll let his grow and then when he gets to Rean's age we can auction his off too."
As the dad of a woolly mammoth-topped pre-Tween, I can only say: Good riddance. I wish I could persuade my boy to do the same!
More on Parentdish: Long haired lovelies: Why do boys with long hair still upset polite society?
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