A practical, evidence-led guide to keeping small people calm at the salon, without defaulting to a screen every time.
The short answer is this: you do not need the phone, and you are not failing your child by wanting to put it away. Most toddlers between eighteen months and four years will resist the hairdresser's chair not because they are being difficult, but because their developing nervous systems are doing exactly what they are designed to do in an unfamiliar, mildly overwhelming environment. A small, tactile toy tucked into your changing bag can do the same job as a screen, often better, and without the dependency that tends to build when devices become the default comfort in stressful situations. With a little preparation, the haircut trip can become genuinely manageable.
If you have been handing over your phone the moment the cape goes on, you are in enormous company. Researchers including Radesky and Madigan have documented how quickly parents reach for devices during moments of low-level stress, not out of laziness, but because screens work immediately, and because the alternative feels uncertain. This guide is here to make the alternative feel concrete and confident, so that by the time you next walk through the salon door, you have a plan that does not depend on battery life.
A haircut asks a great deal of a small child. The chair is high and unstable-feeling. A stranger is standing close, touching their head, making loud noises near their ears. The smells are unfamiliar. Worst of all, the child cannot easily move away, which is the thing toddlers rely on most when they feel uncertain. Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik has described the toddler brain as a lantern rather than a spotlight: it takes in everything at once, making busy, multisensory environments genuinely more intense for under-fives than for older children or adults. This is not a behaviour problem. It is neuroscience.
What the research tells us
Gopnik's work on early childhood attention, alongside Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development, supports the idea that toddlers regulate best not through passive consumption but through active, hands-on engagement with objects. A toy that requires touching, turning and exploring recruits the child's attention from within, rather than simply commanding it from outside as a screen does.
There is a meaningful difference between distraction and regulation. A screen distracts: it overwhelms the senses with rapid input and temporarily suspends the anxiety. A well-chosen toy regulates: it gives small hands something purposeful to do, channels attention gently and lets the child feel a satisfying degree of control in a situation where control is otherwise absent. Researchers Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff have shown consistently that object play, particularly play that is open-ended and tactile, builds executive function, the very capacity children need to manage difficult moments. Dauch's research found that toddlers played longer and more creatively with fewer, simpler toys, precisely because those toys invited sustained engagement rather than passive watching.
Screens, meanwhile, are not neutral in stressful contexts. Radesky's research has shown that using a device to suppress a child's emotional response can, over time, reduce the child's opportunities to learn self-regulation, meaning each subsequent stressful moment becomes harder to manage without one. The hairdresser's chair is a small but genuinely useful training ground for real-world emotional tolerance, and every time a child gets through it without a screen, that capacity grows a little.
The key is novelty and portability. A toy your child has not seen for a week or two will hold attention far longer than a familiar favourite. Pack it the night before and keep it out of sight on the journey, producing it only once the cape is on. Size matters: you want something that fits easily in one small hand and does not require a flat surface or multiple pieces that can fall to the floor. Weight and texture matter too, because touch is one of the primary ways toddlers self-soothe.
Avoid anything with sound effects or flashing lights: these risk being more stimulating than soothing in an already busy environment, and the hairdresser will thank you.
A note on novelty
Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI study, which assessed the play value of a wide range of toys with children aged three to four, found that open-ended, manipulative toys consistently produced the highest levels of sustained engagement. The practical implication for parents is clear: a simple wooden toy rotated from a small "toy library" at home is likely to outperform even the most sophisticated app in keeping a toddler absorbed through a fifteen-minute haircut.
Before the cape goes on, let your child hold the toy and explore it freely for a moment. Once they are in the chair, stay at eye level when you can and narrate warmly what is happening: "The scissors are just saying hello to your hair." Give the toy a role in the story if that helps. Some children respond well to being asked to help a puppet be brave, which recruits their natural empathy and shifts focus outward. If your child begins to escalate, a calm, low voice and a hand on their knee will do more than redirection alone.
Brief the hairdresser in advance if possible. Most experienced children's hairdressers have a set of informal strategies and will work with you if they know what to expect. A cut that takes twelve minutes for an older child may take twenty for a toddler, and a good hairdresser will accommodate that without fuss.
Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has long understood that the best toys are those which invite a child's imagination rather than simply command their attention. The collections best suited to the changing-bag challenge are compact, beautifully made and designed to last well beyond the toddler years.
For the youngest children, explore the Jaques educational toys collection, which includes tactile, open-ended pieces ideal for small hands in constrained spaces. For slightly older toddlers and children approaching four or five, the Jaques travel games collection offers contained, portable games that pack neatly into any bag and come out ready to hold attention through appointments, waiting rooms and long queues alike.
The hairdresser is one moment in a much wider pattern. The same approach, a small, novel, tactile toy produced at the moment of stress, works in waiting rooms, at the GP, on trains and in restaurants. The habit you are building is not about refusing screens at all costs: it is about expanding your child's repertoire of ways to manage difficulty, so that the phone becomes a considered choice rather than an automatic reflex. Suskind's research on early language and interaction reinforces the point: moments of mild stress, handled with warmth and simple tools, are precisely the moments in which children build real resilience.
Entirely. Gopnik's research describes the toddler brain as exquisitely sensitive to novelty, which means unfamiliar environments genuinely require more cognitive and emotional effort from under-fives than they do from older children. Home is regulated and predictable; the hairdresser's salon is loud, strange-smelling and full of people your child does not know. Bringing a familiar object from home alongside a novel distraction bridges that gap helpfully.
There is no precise age, but it is worth adjusting expectations significantly for children under three. Before that point, sitting still in a constrained, unfamiliar environment is a genuine neurological challenge, not a matter of will or behaviour. From around three onwards, with the right preparation and a well-chosen toy, most children can manage a short haircut without a screen. The goal at two is simply to survive it warmly, not to model perfect behaviour.
Yes, and the research from Dauch and from Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI study points in the same direction: simpler, smaller and more tactile tends to mean longer engagement, not shorter. A compact wooden toy with interesting textures, a finger puppet with a face, or a travel game with contained magnetic pieces will often outperform a bulkier, louder toy. The Jaques travel games and educational toys ranges were designed with exactly this kind of portability and purposeful simplicity in mind.
Possibly, for one or two visits, and that is worth knowing in advance so it does not feel like failure. Madigan's research on screen habits in early childhood suggests that transitions away from device use as a primary soother do involve a short adjustment period. The most effective approach is to substitute rather than simply remove: have the toy ready before the phone would usually appear, so there is no gap of unmanaged distress. Within two or three visits, most children adapt to the new routine, particularly if the replacement toy is genuinely engaging and introduced with warmth rather than as a confrontation.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.