A Georgia barber has started offering haircuts for misbehaving kids that he calls the “Benjamin Button Special.” The haircut is considered a form of punishment because it makes young boys look like old men.
A-1 Kutz barber shop in Atlanta offers the haircut for free three days a week. The misbehaving child gets a hair-do that resembles a bald adult.
“I hope that most people won’t have to do this unless it’s an extreme circumstance and nothing else works,” Russell Fredrick, the barber who created the “old man haircut” said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Fredrick says he decided to promote the cut after he used the disciplinary measure on his 12-year-old son, Rushawn, last fall — and saw immediate results. Rushawn’s grades, which had fallen, “dramatically skyrocketed” after he got his old-man haircut, Frederick said.
Frederick said he has already had one parent take him up on the offer. And there has been a surge of interest from other parents, especially after Fredrick posted before, during and after photos of his “Benjamin Button” subject on social media last week.
Fredrick’s Instagram photos of the boy and his old-man haircut went viral. Within four days, the boy was the picture of propriety and good manners. And, with his hair already starting to grow out, he was rewarded with a normal haircut.
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