Recently, I encountered a family that had done something that disturbed me greatly, though I can’t define why. The mother had been dying her brown hair purple, and had put the left over dye through the hair of both her young daughters. The older child had dark brown hair and it didn’t show at all, but Mother Of The Year[sup]tm[/sup] was surprised when her 4 year old’s blonde hair came out in dark purple patches. “I didn’t know it would take so well!” she gaffawed.
I found it really disturbing that they used permanent hair dye on their 4 and 9 year old children. I found it more disturbing that the dye was purple and had been dabbed here and there so there were large purple patches through the hair. Even if it had been a normal colour and applied properly, I think I still would have been shocked and disgusted at the idea of someone dying a child’s hair. but I can’t give a reason for it. It just seems wrong to me.
What do you think? Permanent dye in small children’s hair - bad or not bad?
to me that just seems like taking your 4 year old to macy’s to get a makeover…i have seen small children whose parents get their children’s hair hilighted and it just seems silly more than anything else. kids dont care THAT MUCH about how they look (or they’d care if they got that ice cream bar all over their faces) and that’s one of the best things people remember about childhood–that they didn’t have to care.
purple hair in a kid, well it’s up to the parent. but i wouldn’t.
My gramma’s neighbor would regularly bleach her kids’ hair. Decided that since the last name was Swedish (her husband was blond, she was a brunette, the kids were brunettes), everyone in the family ought to look blonde. Six kids, lots of hair dye every other month. This went on for years til the kids were out of the house (or nearly so, with the youngest).
If a child’s hair is still developing and can’t withstand a perm, I don’t see how it could stand up to coloring it.
Also, I think a kid should be allowed to be a kid. Period! They grow up soon enough. They don’t need to be worrying about coloring their hair before they are old enough to be dating. The idea of it leads me to thinking about the kiddie beauty pagents, but that’s another can of worms so I won’t go there.
One year for halloween my brother and I went as Vampires. Part of the costume was black hair so my dad got dye. He accdentally got permanent. We spend the best part of a year (it probably wasn’t that long but when you’re young…) with jet black hair. I was 7 and my brother was 5. Didn’t hurt us any!
It seems silly, but harmless, as an occasional thing. Purple…interesting. I’ve been debating blue for a few weeks now – not permanent, because I’d have to go through the whole bleaching thing, but there’s sprays and stuff you can get for temporary weird hair.
I also feel slightly queasy about the idea of permanent dye on a young childs’ hair. For one thing, I know that the dye chemicals do penetrate the scalp, and to some degree gets into the blood. No problem for an adult, but possibly for a small child; seems like such a silly thing to take a chance on. That’s why I never dyed my hair during pregnancy. Also, with someone as young as four, you run the risk of them squirming and getting it in their eyes. Also not safe. I wouldn’t do it.
I think it’s a bit evil to dye a kid’s hair. Let your kid be a freaking kid, for heaven’s sake. If the kid wants to dye his/her own hair (once s/he’s old enough to have common sense) then so be it, but I don’t think parents should go to cosmetic extremes on their children.
I’m equally creeped out by babies with piercings, little girls wearing make-up, etc.
As a dyed girl (my hair is pink more often than not) I think hair dye is a lot of fun. What better time to have fun than as a kid? I see nothoing wrong with dyeing a kids hair for fun, although I would frown on doing it to look “good”.
Temporary hair color- no problem. However, from personal experience with LilMiss, blonde children shouldn’t use ANY type of hair colorant as it will not come out easily. It took a full three months for fuchia hair mascara to work it’s way out.
The rule around here is that she has to wait until age 10 for ears pierced and 16 to color hair. Why those ages? Dunno. Picked them out of a hat.
Instead, she has a funky collection of wigs to play with.
Anything that makes a kid different will get it bullied mercilessly. Purple hair? That’ll make her a nice easy obvious bullying target…take it from one who knows, Anything remotely unusual gets seized upon by bullies like hungry wolves upon a wandering lost lamb…change a child’s appearance like that and you may as well start saving up for the psychiatrist’s bills now…:mad:
And then there is the medical concerns on top of that…and yeah, I agree that when babies and small children have their ears pierced it’s just disgusting. You get the impression that those kids are regarded as freakin’ fashion accessories rather than children by their braindead parents…gah (eek this is starting to sound like the Pit!)
My Sister in law (who is a b*** but that’s another story) said that if any of her children came out with ginger hair she would dye it! She swore blind about this as she despised ginger hair that much, I bet that if any of the kids had come out ginger she would have given it up as too much expense and trouble in 5 seconds flat!
I’d use temporary dye if my kids wanted to play with it but permanent probably not.
OTOH my MIL is coming to stay for 3 weeks (dunno what she didn’t understand about 2 weeks being the longest she was welcome) and if I dye P the E’s hair it will upset her greatly. Heh. She got upset when my dsd dyed her hair at 17. Wonder what colour he would like?
My grandmother once dyed my hair brown (with permanent dye) when I was about 5 years old. I’m a redhead - and the only one in my family, counting out several generations of cousins even. On top of that my grandmother thought red hair was hideously ugly and told me so. So she commenced to dye my long curly hair this awful dark brown.
My mum flipped, to say the least. Shortly thereafter we moved overseas.
I don’t see anything wrong with temporary hair dye on children old enough to consent. Like a ten year old. Any younger and it just seems completely wrong to me.
I don’t think children should be exposed to permanent hair dye at all. It’s dangerous chemicals, for crying out loud!
MissTake mentions wigs–I think that’s a great idea. If your kid wants to play “dress up” with a different hair colour, a wig is the perfect idea. And cheap Halowe’en wigs come in all sorts of interesting colours and styles.
I should have specified that permanent dye is too much for a kid, but there’s lots of temporary stuff out there if you want to play a bit.
I’d love to know why the initial mother here thought the purple would show up on her daughter’s brown hair – on the packages of blue dye I looked at, they all said on dark hair for the best effect you must bleach it first. No way in hell am I bleaching my hair.
