Houston stylist provides mobile haircutting services for children with special needs
HOUSTON - Peace, love, and haircuts!
A local stylist has taken her special skills on the road after meeting parents unable to take their special needs children to the barbershop.
Yelling, kicking, and screaming is not the reaction you look forward to when it's time for your child to get their hair cut, but that doesn’t stop Angelica "Jelly" Robinson. Styling special needs children is her specialty.
"Those kids are my lifeline on my darkest days," says Robinson. "I think about the progress that I make with the kid or a family that felt like they had no options."
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Robinson officially opened Peace and Love Studios, her mobile haircutting service in March after years of working in a salon while meeting clients on her off days.
"There were a lot of people that came in that were turned away because of their behavior- and I'm like, ‘Wow, I cannot believe that people in my beauty industry think that this is an okay way to treat anyone. We have a license to make people feel beautiful, literally, all people," she says.
Robinson says about 80 percent of her customers are on the autism spectrum; others just need special care from an extra special barber.
"They just may be fearful or shy or having anxiety, struggle with depression or just confidence issues," she explains.
Her cargo van isn't paved in mirrors and glamorous touches, but it's just right for her clientele. She has a chalkboard she had planned to use for children to sign their names, but the bright, colorful signatures ended up all over the walls.
"One day one of my kids said, ‘I want to draw on the wood,’ so I said, ‘go for it!"
Robinson says she speaks with parents before appointments to make sure their children will be comfortable and to help identify any triggers.
"If there's something that your child is definitely afraid of, I'm not going to have that visible when they come into my studio," she says. "It really is all about the accommodations and making sure that I'm listening to them, even if they don't talk more words."
"She's always calming, and she never gets hair on any other people's eyes," says eight-year-old Jayven Vega who has been getting his hair cut by "Ms. Jelly" for five years.
His parents say there is a reason Robinson is called the "kid whisperer".
"Regular places I would have to hold him down like literally grasp him as he was crying, kicking, and screaming," says Marcus Vega. "He's screaming, and everybody's looking and it's just it was probably the worst feeling."
Melva Vega says Robinson’s approach makes the whole family comfortable with the experience.
"She's just patient, you know, she'll take all the time she needs with him, put on his favorite movie, let him explore," she says. "Within a year, it was amazing, we saw the difference, the transformation, with him, getting haircuts."
Skills for styling children with special needs is what Robinson hopes to teach others across the country, maybe around the world someday.
"If I could at least have one person in every city that takes on challenge accepted haircuts with grace and pride and patience and kindness, then my job on this earth will be done."
For more on Robinson’s services, visit her website.