So my kids were not blessed with fast-growing hair. For each of them sometime before age 1.5 they ended up with awful mullets. Their heads grow faster than the hair, so it gets short on the sides with the proverbial party in back. Awful.
For boys, that’s an easy fix. First haircut and you’re back to presentable.
For girls… there’s either the pixie cut, or there’s the putting up teeny tiny rubber-banded spikes on the side of the head (“Pebbles-style”)… and I think that’s it. Maybe a person can try to even it out, but it’s still going to be longer in the back than on the sides.
So what do people do with the toddler mullet? Just leave it?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
November 19, 2013 at 6:05 am
My two-year-old daughter has a mullet! I usually pin the hair on the top back with a clip against her head. It kind’ve cuts down on the mulletness. She won’t let me do tiny pigtails.
November 19, 2013 at 2:29 pm
I don’t think I’d let someone do tiny pigtails to me either!
November 19, 2013 at 6:40 am
1 word. Faux-hawk.
November 19, 2013 at 8:35 am
Don’t think DH hasn’t tried!
November 19, 2013 at 9:27 am
I leave it. My 2 year old’s hair is still too short to do any kind of pig or pony tail! Someday she’ll have hair, in the meantime people often think she’s a girl.
November 19, 2013 at 2:30 pm
The gender of both our children has often-times been confusing to outside viewers. Mwahahaha gender-neutral clothing.
November 19, 2013 at 10:10 am
We left it. It was more pronounced in our younger daughter, whose hair is straight. We have some awesome mullet photos that we think are super cute now.
Target sells simple bow clips that are cloth covered and slide into the hair. Those work really well to dress up toddler mullet for things like school pictures.
November 19, 2013 at 2:31 pm
DC2 loves hats. DC1 was pretty anti-anything on hir head.
November 19, 2013 at 10:56 am
I saw a hilarious Cindy Lou Who hairdo on a wispily-befuzzed kid up in Oregon. :-)
November 19, 2013 at 2:32 pm
awwww
November 19, 2013 at 11:38 am
Mullet or not, babies are cute so I don’t think it matters.
November 19, 2013 at 2:32 pm
True!
November 19, 2013 at 12:51 pm
My kids always ripped out their ponytails, so we settled for bangs the first couple years even though I have an aversion to bangs. I always took them in for trims to keep the hair as even and unmullety as possible. There were a ton of trims because stupid bangs grow fast and when I try to even them out myself they end up with Vulcan cuts. It all works out eventually. Both of my older girls let me grow out their evil bangs when they were 3. Maybe this third girl will let me put in Pebbles ponytails from the beginning of the bangs/mullet crisis.
November 19, 2013 at 2:32 pm
We don’t have bangs yet!
November 19, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Oh jeez, I had the worst hair when I was a kid. I had a nice blonde mullet, and the stuff on the top stuck straight up (unless we were at my dad’s parents’ house, in which case my grandmother would wet it down so my head looked like a bowling ball). My mom usually opted to leave it–apparently I must not have been a bow sort of girl, because I rarely see photos of me wearing them. I ended up with boy hair (a bowl cut, ugh) once the mullet grew out, which might have been worse.
I’m pretty sympathetic to kids with bad hair (unless their parents give them a mullet unironically when they’re older), so I’d say leave it in all of its mullet-y glory unless your kidlets love things on their head, in which case get them the coolest, funkiest bows you can find. The first time I brought my SO home to visit my parents, my mom busted out the photos from the mullet/boy hair years. He thought they were hilarious and adorable at the same time (small sample size, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others had similar experiences).
November 19, 2013 at 2:33 pm
awwwww
November 20, 2013 at 11:59 am
I must be totally missing something. I don’t understand why there is a gendered difference in what to do with baby hair. Actually I feel moderately surprised that this blog, in particular, is discussing the need for an adequately feminine haircut for a kid under 3. Do we really need to be enforcing the patriarchy that early?
November 20, 2013 at 12:18 pm
There’s a difference between going gender-neutral and forcing something gendered for the opposite gender on a person. Regardless of the genders of my children, and what we chose to do, I was curious what people do. The mullet would be the arguably gender-neutral choice, but it is not particularly attractive on either gender.
If it makes you feel better, we would never Pebbles pony-tail or bow a girl baby.
November 21, 2013 at 8:11 am
I’m sorry if I came across as rude, I wasn’t trying to be. Just confused. Still confused, actually, but I am okay with that. An opportunity to ponder on the importance of gender signifiers on babies. I just got some baby clothes to send to my godchild, and noticed only after purchasing that they are (according to the designer) inappropriately gendered for the child in question. I can’t for the life of me figure out why – I keep looking at them and not getting it. I feel the same way about baby haircuts (well, more generally about any haircuts) and gender – I really don’t get what is male-gendered about short hair on a small person. Is it the same as or different from putting a baby girl in blue clothes? What about a baby boy in red or purple? (Pink is such an unattractive clothing color that I would argue against it for any child who doesn’t request it specially)
LOL @ mullets as the ultimate gender neutral haircut. So true! So awful!
November 21, 2013 at 8:30 am
Red is officially a baby boy color! Pink is the only “official” baby girl color. Boys are given a lot more “official” variety– basically any solid color that isn’t yellow.