The children's haircut experience is a different animal than your run-of-the-mill adult haircut. In everyway, you as a parent, should be aware of this. Indeed, the first thing to note is that seeing the scissors can be a frightening experience. Thus, many times when I am doing a child's hair, I will actually hide this from them. The point is that every aspect of this experience can be scary for them. In this case, simply knowing this will help you prepare for the experience. There is, then, a before the haircut preparation that you can do. For example, when talking about the prospective experience only talk about the good stuff like"it's fun" "you'll get a treat afterwards" etc. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, bribary is not below this experience, especially when you figure that if they don't have a good experience, it could result in years of bad experiences for them. So make that first haircut as fun as possible. Of course, it's not entirely up to you. That means get a stylist that likes working with kids!