"Mum, can I have a labret for my twelfth birthday?"
magenta_mum
With the discussion about hair colour / personal expression, I thought
I'd add in the following warts and all account of my internal
processes and some of the external around a piercing not-in-earlobe.
K: Mum, can I have a labret for my twelfth birthday?
Me: What's a labret?
K: A lip piercing.
Me: <pause> Oh, well let's look into it.
Call me oldfashioned and uncool, but I would've felt more relaxed if
she'd been asking for more holes in her earlobes. I've always fancied,
but never gotten a nose piercing. I have a tattoo on my back that I
got when I was in my twenties (I'm 42 now). So it's not that I'm
averse to body art / piercings, I just wasn't sure how much some of
the rest of the world might have a prob with it on a youngish person.
Of course, what school would say about it wasn't an issue for us by
then, still, there were questions I thought worth thinking about.
I wondered about the possible dental prob's with mouth piercings; how
the local Home Ed group would feel about it (would we be asked to
leave because they thought it inappropriate?); how might future
employers perceive piercings not-in-ears (my sibling was good here,
she had a brow piercing and hadn't had prob's getting part-time work
in our fairly conservative town at a chain book store and pizza place
with it - though she did have to take it out for her shifts - and
could only think of one employer she'd ever had who would definitely
NOT have taken her on because of it).
K did a major google search (something I used to do for her, mostly -
though she does it much more herself nowadays). There were a lot of
hits to dental sites that warned of possible prob's, mostly with
tongue piercing, not so much lips, wearing on enamel and such. She
looked at sites of people who did have labrets to get the real life
experiences side of things, and got some good tips about care and the
occasional problem people had experienced.
It was pretty close to her birthday at the time and I kinda had other
plans, so I ended up saying "well, howabout for your thirteenth, if
you still want it, or if before then, probably paying for it
yourself". We'd checked out the costs of the piercing itself, care
products, etc, and had discovered that one piercing place in town
wouldn't do under 14's, even with parental permission. Thankfully, one
professional place was fine with it, though I still had to sign my
permission.
So, K got a labret about two months after her twelfth birthday, (she's
14 now), which she paid for herself mostly with birthday money from
other family members. She'd decided she wouldn't have cared much if
the local HE group didn't continue to welcome us (nobody's said
anything, though we don't do much with them since our very busy first
year).
K had her last visit to the "school" dental nurse she'd been seeing
since she was three, post piercing, and the dental nurse was fine with
it from her personal and professional pov.
There wasn't any acrimony around my sort of stalling on saying yes,
because I wasn't saying no outright, and have no habit of doing so
arbitrarily. K knows I can be a tad bit fogeyish in my outlook
sometimes, a little slow to embrace some things - much as I'd like to
deny that altogether - just `cause I was raised differently, in
different times. And it is oftentimes wise to explore before
committing, I reckon.
Jo R
http://www.freewebs.com/having-a-cow/
I'd add in the following warts and all account of my internal
processes and some of the external around a piercing not-in-earlobe.
K: Mum, can I have a labret for my twelfth birthday?
Me: What's a labret?
K: A lip piercing.
Me: <pause> Oh, well let's look into it.
Call me oldfashioned and uncool, but I would've felt more relaxed if
she'd been asking for more holes in her earlobes. I've always fancied,
but never gotten a nose piercing. I have a tattoo on my back that I
got when I was in my twenties (I'm 42 now). So it's not that I'm
averse to body art / piercings, I just wasn't sure how much some of
the rest of the world might have a prob with it on a youngish person.
Of course, what school would say about it wasn't an issue for us by
then, still, there were questions I thought worth thinking about.
I wondered about the possible dental prob's with mouth piercings; how
the local Home Ed group would feel about it (would we be asked to
leave because they thought it inappropriate?); how might future
employers perceive piercings not-in-ears (my sibling was good here,
she had a brow piercing and hadn't had prob's getting part-time work
in our fairly conservative town at a chain book store and pizza place
with it - though she did have to take it out for her shifts - and
could only think of one employer she'd ever had who would definitely
NOT have taken her on because of it).
K did a major google search (something I used to do for her, mostly -
though she does it much more herself nowadays). There were a lot of
hits to dental sites that warned of possible prob's, mostly with
tongue piercing, not so much lips, wearing on enamel and such. She
looked at sites of people who did have labrets to get the real life
experiences side of things, and got some good tips about care and the
occasional problem people had experienced.
It was pretty close to her birthday at the time and I kinda had other
plans, so I ended up saying "well, howabout for your thirteenth, if
you still want it, or if before then, probably paying for it
yourself". We'd checked out the costs of the piercing itself, care
products, etc, and had discovered that one piercing place in town
wouldn't do under 14's, even with parental permission. Thankfully, one
professional place was fine with it, though I still had to sign my
permission.
So, K got a labret about two months after her twelfth birthday, (she's
14 now), which she paid for herself mostly with birthday money from
other family members. She'd decided she wouldn't have cared much if
the local HE group didn't continue to welcome us (nobody's said
anything, though we don't do much with them since our very busy first
year).
K had her last visit to the "school" dental nurse she'd been seeing
since she was three, post piercing, and the dental nurse was fine with
it from her personal and professional pov.
There wasn't any acrimony around my sort of stalling on saying yes,
because I wasn't saying no outright, and have no habit of doing so
arbitrarily. K knows I can be a tad bit fogeyish in my outlook
sometimes, a little slow to embrace some things - much as I'd like to
deny that altogether - just `cause I was raised differently, in
different times. And it is oftentimes wise to explore before
committing, I reckon.
Jo R
http://www.freewebs.com/having-a-cow/