Your eight-year-old announces she wants long hair. Or your son has decided the buzz cut is over and he’d like it to flop. Either way, you’ve got maybe nine months of in-between ahead of you, and somewhere around month three it’s going to look like nobody is in charge.
The awkward stage in kids hair cuts is not inevitable. It’s a shape problem, and shape problems have solutions. What makes growing out go badly is the thing parents assume is helping: leaving it alone.
Why Growing Out Goes Wrong
Three specific things happen, and once you can name them you can head them off.
The sides catch up to the top. On a short cut, the contrast between short sides and longer top is what makes the shape read. Grow everything at once and the sides reach the length where they stop lying flat and start sticking out. You get width at the ears, height nowhere, and a triangle.
The back flips. As the nape grows past about two inches, it hits the length where it curls outward instead of hanging down. Fine hair does it worst, and no amount of brushing fixes the little wing at the neck.
The fringe blinds them. Front hair grows into the eyes long before the back reaches the target length. Kids push it aside a hundred times a day, then decide long hair was a terrible idea. Most abandoned grow-outs die right here.
Bonus problem: the mullet effect. Length behind and nothing on top, common in boys growing out a fade.
The Counterintuitive Truth: You Still Need Haircuts
Growing out hair requires cutting hair, and skipping appointments is what produces the awkward stage rather than preventing it. You’re not removing length overall; you’re removing it selectively, so the shorter sections can catch up while the longer sections hold their position. A stylist takes almost nothing off the areas you want to grow and cleans up the areas that are ruining the shape.
Plan on a maintenance visit every eight to ten weeks through a grow-out. Snip-its stylists talk through when the next haircut should happen as part of every visit, which makes the timing easier to plan than guessing at the mirror. Skip a whole season of appointments and you just arrive at a point where the only fix is cutting more off than you wanted.
What to Ask For at Each Stage
The words matter, because “we’re growing it out, don’t cut anything” gets you the triangle described above. Try these instead.
Early stage, the first two or three months:
- “We’re growing this out. Please leave the length on top and in back.”
- “Can you tidy the neckline and around the ears without shortening anything else?”
Middle stage, months three to six:
- “The sides are sticking out. Can you take weight out without taking length?”
- “The back is flipping. Can you shape it so it lies down?”
Late stage, months six and beyond:
- “Everything is nearly the same length now. Can you cut it into an actual shape?”
- “Can we add some long layers so it moves?”
The word blend is your most useful one, and take weight out, not length is the second. Our guide on asking for the cut you want covers more of that vocabulary.
The Awkward Phases and Roughly How Long Each Lasts
Hair grows at about half an inch a month, so a grow-out has a predictable shape. Timings vary with texture and starting length, and curly hair shrinks visually, so it can feel like it’s stalled when it isn’t.
| Phase | Roughly When | What It Looks Like | What Helps |
| The fringe crisis | Weeks 6 to 12 | Front hair in the eyes constantly | Micro-trim the fringe only, or clip it back |
| The wings | Months 3 to 5 | Sides pushing out above the ears | Weight removed from the sides, not length |
| The flip | Months 4 to 6 | Back curling outward at the nape | Shaping at the nape, light product, patience |
| The shapeless middle | Months 5 to 8 | Length everywhere, silhouette nowhere | Long layers to create movement |
| It finally works | Months 8 to 12 | Ties back, lies down, reads as a style | A proper cut to set the new shape |
Families quit during two of those phases: the fringe crisis and the wings. Both last about six to eight weeks, and both are fixable with a fifteen-minute appointment.
Styling Tricks That Buy You Time
While the length catches up, styling is doing the work.
For the fringe crisis:
- Side part. Sweeping front hair to one side gets it out of the eyes and looks deliberate.
- Clips and small braids. A tiny braid along the front holds all week, and a Basic Braid at the salon is a fast add-on.
- Micro-trim the fringe alone. This does not slow down the overall grow-out.
For the wings:
- Damp it down in the morning. Water and a comb reset the direction.
- A little cream or light styling product. Kid-friendly salon-quality products make a real difference on the sides.
- Ask for weight removed. This is the actual fix.
For the flip at the nape:
- Dry it downward rather than letting it air-dry into a curl.
- Tuck it, don’t fight it. On longer styles a low ponytail hides the flip entirely.
For the shapeless middle:
- Braids and ponytails become your friend. A braid makes a shapeless length look intentional, and Trendy Braiding is worth booking once or twice through this stretch.
- A Blow Dry after a trim shows you what the shape is actually doing.
When to Give Up and Go Short Again
Sometimes the honest answer is that this grow-out isn’t working, and that’s fine. Signals worth taking seriously:
- Your child is genuinely unhappy with how it looks, week after week. Kids get to have opinions about their own hair.
- The morning routine has become a fight. Ten minutes of daily conflict is too high a cost.
- It’s getting damaged. Constant tangling, brushing and breakage at the ends means the length isn’t holding anyway.
- They stopped caring about the goal. The kid who wanted long hair in March may have moved on by September.
If you do go short again, tell the stylist the history. “We tried growing it out and it didn’t work” helps them pick a shape that suits the hair as it is now. A gentler middle option is cutting back to a medium length, which resets the shape and keeps length open for later.
A Realistic Timeline for Kids Hair Cuts During a Grow-Out
A grow-out from a short cut to genuinely long hair looks like this:
- Month 0: the last short cut, or the decision point.
- Months 2 to 3: first maintenance visit. Neckline, ears, fringe only.
- Months 4 to 5: second visit. Weight out of the sides, shaping at the nape.
- Months 6 to 7: third visit. Blending, first long layers.
- Months 9 to 10: fourth visit. The cut that sets the new shape.
- After that: normal maintenance on the style you were aiming for.
Four appointments across roughly a year, none of them removing meaningful length.
General guidance on children’s hair and scalp care from Nemours KidsHealth and the American Academy of Dermatology is worth a look if breakage or scalp irritation comes up. For the wider picture on what each age needs, see the parent’s guide to haircuts for children by age and tween haircuts for older kids making their own style calls.
Growing out hair is a project. Book the four appointments and the awkward stage mostly stops happening.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you still need haircuts while growing out short hair?
Yes, and this is the part most parents get backwards. Growing out works best with a maintenance visit every eight to ten weeks, where the stylist removes almost no length and cleans up the areas that spoil the shape.
How long does it take to grow out a short kids haircut?
Hair grows around half an inch a month, so a short cut to shoulder length usually takes somewhere between nine and eighteen months depending on the starting point and the texture. Curly hair takes longer to look longer because of shrinkage.
Why are the sides of your child’s hair sticking out?
As the sides grow past a certain point they reach the length where they no longer lie flat, which pushes them outward. The fix is having weight removed from the sides rather than length, so they can keep growing without widening the silhouette.
Can you trim the fringe without slowing down the grow-out?
Yes. Keeping front hair out of the eyes has no effect on the rest of the grow-out, and it prevents the most common reason families give up.
What can be done about hair flipping out at the back of the neck?
Around two inches the nape often curls outward, especially on fine hair. Shaping at the nape, drying the hair downward, and a light styling product all help. It usually passes within six to eight weeks.
When should you stop growing it out and go short again?
When your child is consistently unhappy with it, when mornings have turned into a daily fight, when the ends are breaking, or when they’ve lost interest in the goal. Hair grows back, so there’s no cost to changing course.