End their grounding, tell them you are sorry, and read on.
Our parenting blog crew (which consists of yours truly, and yours truly alone) set out to confirm our suspicion that the stress of being a mom or dad could not change the color of your hair.
We spoke to George Cotsarelis, MD, director of Penn's Hair and Scalp Clinic. He met with us at the hospital's Perelman Center in University City.
Dr. Cotsarelis started by saying stressful events do not trigger grayness, and that hairs cannot turn "gray overnight," as some believe. Hair is produced by two cells: one makes the hair itself, another causes the color, or pigmentation. When the pigmentation cell dies, hairs can only grow out as gray ones.
"If those pigment cells are present, and are happy and they are making pigment, your hair is going to be dark, or normal color," Dr. Cotsarelis says.
"Once they give up the ghost, and they stop making pigment, the hair turns gray."
It is one of those genetics versus environment arguments, the doctor says. The science on your gray hairs points all fingers toward genetics.
Natural experiments have been conducted for generations through the somewhat rare instance of identical twins: "If you look at twins, identical twins tend to go gray at the same time. So if you [the doctor is now referring to this blogger] had an identical twin, he probably wouldn't be gray, just like you, right?"
Full disclosure: I am starting to gray. A little.
Bottom line: your children will be happy to know that it's not their fault. Maybe they will see that as an invitation to continue with their bad behavior while you're 1. trying to check out at the supermarket 2. trying to talk on the phone 3. trying to serve dinner 4. insert your own situation.
Oh well.
"Stress has not been associated with causing gray hair [at least in the medical world] so that's one thing parents don't need to worry about."
So why have parents been saying all this time "you kids are turning my hair gray!!!"?
Well, Dr. Cotsarelis says there may be a simple explanation.
Alopecia areata is a condition where stress can induce patchy hair loss. Let's say your child just took you through a roller coaster of emotions (again, add your own stressful situation here).
Scratch that. Let's take it to another level – let's say you suddenly lost a close relative. That traumatic event can cause you to lose some of your colored hair in certain spots – leaving only grays behind.
The lack of any colored hair in those regions of your scalp could give the impression that you "grayed" overnight, when in fact all that happened was you lost healthy, colored hair.
Dr. Cotsarelis: "The dark hair falls out and the gray hair remains behind. And that can happen very quickly, over a matter of a week or two. You can lose all the dark hair and be left with gray hair.
"You may not realize it, but that's what happens."
Okay, you say, so why do Presidents always look like they go gray shortly after taking office? Have you heard how stressful it is to run the country? Have you seen President Obama lately?
We asked Dr. Cotsarelis about that too. He says that's an easy one: Presidents usually take office in their 40's and 50's, when most people turn gray anyway. President Obama is 48 years old.
"He's [Obama] at the right age to be going gray. Most presidents are at that same age."
Alright, so we've established that your kids aren't graying your hair, and that members of the opposition party in Congress aren't graying the Commander-in-Chief. So why do we go gray in the first place?
Do gray hairs fulfill a purpose, offer a mode of survival, keep us from danger? Do men and women benefit from being gray? Are our grays part of a secret reason as to why our species has become dominant on this planet?
Dr. Cotsarelis offers this:
"You can look at it as a sign of wisdom. People that are gray are a little older, they probably have been around longer, so it's a sign that these people survived longer, maybe they are trusted leaders."
Come to think of it: that old, gray-haired man with the long beard on the top of the mountain does seem pretty smart.
As for any new treatments coming down the pike to prevent you from going gray in the first place, Dr. Cotsarelis says don't hold your breath. There is little incentive for researchers to develop medical treatments to un-gray hair because there are relatively cheap, and relatively easy products on the market that already do that.
One product that sticks in my mind, the one featuring Keith Hernandez and Walt Frazier in a bar:
"Reeeee-jected! No play for Mr. Gray!"
As for baldness, well, that's a whole different story.
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