Yes, kids are resilient, but they're also sensitive to comments from their peers, so a natural-looking wig will be welcomed and appreciated by your child. Whatever the reason -- whether chemo, radiation, alopecia, burn recovery, etc. -- your child's outlook on their situation will be bolstered by a chance to look and feel like they did before losing their hair.
No Additional Financial Burden
If your child is going through extensive medical treatment for cancer or another serious illness, you're stressed enough, both emotionally and financially, to be asked to worry about coming up with additional funds to buy your child a wig. You'd move Heaven and Earth to try to find a way, but with the Wigs for Kids program, you won't have to "find a way". Thanks to the hard work of our network and its salons which includes
- Fundraising events
- Donations from individuals and businesses
- Sponsorship of a child
We're able to continue to meet the needs of these children who want nothing more than to feel like normal, carefree kids again. We are thankful for the inherent goodness in people -- especially those who've experienced hair loss themselves or are close to someone who has. Every day caring people donate their own long locks so that somebody else can have a chance to feel good about themselves, and when that "somebody else" is a child, it makes everybody involved feel good.
How the Program Works
New Look Institute in San Jose, in partnership with Wigs for Kids, is certified to measure and custom fit a child in need of hair replacement with a wig or hairpiece from Wigs for Kids. We'll style it so that your child looks and feels the way they did before they lost their hair. Certification represents more than the ability to measure, fit and style a wig or hairpiece. It also requires the empathy and knowledge necessary to deeply and fully understand what a child is going through emotionally, enabling you to comfort and care for them throughout the process. Children who lose their hair are already suffering physical challenges, and the additional emotional distress is simply heartbreaking, and as a parent, you just want to make the emotional hurt go away. Hair loss can result in a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem for anyone, but for a child it can be especially difficult.
The wigs and hairpieces provided by the Wigs for Kids organization look and feel like real hair. Custom fitting ensures that they'll stay on throughout a child's active lifestyle, even through activities like swimming or playing sports. They truly do so much to help a child feel like themselves again!
History of Wigs for Kids
Jeffrey Paul, the founder of Wigs for Kids, started out as a hairdresser. But when his 15-year-old niece was diagnosed with Leukemia and knew that the treatments she'd be undergoing would mean she'd lose her hair, she was devastated! She begged her uncle -- an expert, in her eyes, on all things "hair", to help her. How could he refuse? He began to research wigs -- specifically, children's wigs, and learned that designing children's wigs is more difficult than designing wigs for adults because children are smaller, and far more active than most adults. Working with doctors and prosthetic specialists, he designed a wig that would adhere to a child's scalp even through activities like gymnastics (his niece's passion), swimming, sports and sleep-overs.
The first wig he designed was for his niece. She wore it during her gymnastics routine as Paul and his wife looked on from the bleachers. It stayed on! From that moment on, Jeffrey Paul's life would never be the same. He'd found his life's calling, and 30-odd years later, he's still putting smiles on the faces of children just like his niece!
If you know a child in the community who's facing hair loss, contact us, and together we'll put a smile back on the face of a child you care about -- at no charge from measurement to delivery!
