Wondering if you have any opinions on how young of a child should be allowed to dye their hair?
My 11 year-old blonde daughter wants to dye her hair red. Not like bright cherry red - more like the color of our reddish-gold golden retriever.
In the past we have - um - dissuaded her from purple streaks. But now we are saying sure. Our opinions is pretty much - hair grows back. Not sure if I would say same if she were going blue or green…
We said she would have to buy the dye herself, and she is saving up for it. This is obviously more than one of those flash-in-the-pan ideas a kid gets and soon forgets. She has been consistent on it for a few weeks, and has a plan on how she will save the $, how long it will take, etc. (Right now she is slightly in debt to us, as she bought a charm bracelet on a recent vacation.)
But we are giving her a semi-perm kit for Easter. She’ll be thrilled. And if she later wants to pay to go permanent, what the heck.
My sister got pushed into getting lots of perms because, as my mom never tired of telling her, “your hair is so fine and straight, you can’t do anything with it.” Now years later, my sis is convinced she has awful hair (she doesn’t). That’s why I say cool if it’s your daughter’s idea.
At her age, I think I would try to stick with the semi permanent color. There are some decent brands out there that give good results without all of the maintenance.
Is she willing to buy hair dye every 4-8 weeks (depending on how fast her hair grows) to keep up with the outgrowth?
I’m sixteen. My parents think hair dye is the root of all evil.
Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
However, my GCSEs are coming up, and they finish on the morning of June 17th. That afternoon I plan to go to this hairdressers I know (it’s a good one, and one of my friends works there) and get my hair dipped red. I figure I couldn’t choose a better day for rebellion.
My son dyed his hair every color of the rainbow when he was a rebellioius 15. I thought I would die at the sight of him. I since learned that it’s his hair and his means of self-expression, regardless of how hideous I thought it was. We all lived through it.
I’ve been putting blonde streaks in my 12 y.o. sons hair for a couple years now. It’s fun for us both, a little mother-son bonding and he gets to express himself a little bit, in a harmless way.
This is from the deep dark recesses of my brain, so feel free to flame me if I am incorrect, but doesn’t the permanent die contain a bunch of lead? IIRC, I heard once the “JustForMen” brand had it. Not exactly the kind of stuff you want to dump on the head of someone who is activly creating new synaptic pathways.
I don’t know if they still make it, but there’s a brand called Glints that makes semi-permanent color in all sorts of shades. I started using it whe I was about 14, and I had fun dying my hair a different color every month. Red, maroon, chocolate, mahogany. Then from the time I was 15 until I turned 19 I cycled through everything from blue, green and purple to bright sunshine yellow. I even shaved my head a time or two, and loved having my hair in corn rows (I’m a white girl, btw).
I’m now all growed up, with a good job, education and life in general, and I sport a very conservative 'do.
I don’t think she’ll suffer any harm, even if you start out with a permanent dye. So she gets some roots showing – big deal. Just let her try a different color ::
Let her have all the fun she wants to before she has to grow up too soon and get a good job. I’m glad I did.
I agree with XJETGIRLX. I wish I’d dyed my hair purple or bright pink or something growing up, because now I work a corporate job and can’t do it. Not that my parents would’ve let me dye my hair any other color, but I might’ve done it anyway. I swear, if I can ever make a living as a novelist, out comes the strange dyes.
I have heard of chemicals being in hair dye but it never crossed my mind that lead could be one of them. There are chemicals in everything but lead’s just scarier.
Streaking doesn’t get any on the scalp, not that it makes it okay.
My little brother (who is 16) has been dying his hair regularly for about a year and half now. He started turning grey at 14. We feel bad for him and it looks nice.
Even if your daughter doesn’t need to dye her hair, I say let her. There are much worse, more permanent convictions that she could have. I would advise, however, that she get it done professionally, as home jobs are easily botched if you are an amateur. Maybe, if she can save up the money for the dye herself, you could take that and pay the rest for a professional to do it? Just a suggestion.
Also, the temporary colos look nice for about the first week, but when they start to fade sometimees they go through very unattractive phases, so it could be just as worse in growing out effects as roots.
I hope that last sentence made sense, I don’t know how else to phrase it. … .
The “progressive” dyes referred to in that fact sheet are the ones that you use repeatedly until your hair reaches the desired color (Grecian Formula is the name of the one I remember), not regular dyes. I wouldn’t let an 11 year old go to permanent , though. Permanent colors are the ones that need the roots touched up every few weeks. Semi-permanent colors wash out after a certain number of shampoos (the level I use lasts up to 24 shampoos) and don’t leave obvious roots.
I may be a goof, but I not only let my kids color their hair, I’ve even encouraged it. My reasoning is, as someone previously said, hair grows back. To me, it’s a fun and temporary way to be a little “out there” and get noticed.
I love the short hair, bleach blond look that was popular with teenage guys a few years ago. I think it looks even cooler when it grows out a bit and only the tips are blond. My teenage sons let me do it to them a few times, but tired of it and wouldn’t let me do it anymore.
After she begged for months, I let my daughter, age 12 at the time, get a few blond streaks. (I wasn’t as eager to let my daughter dye her hair as I was for my sons, since her hair is so much longer than theirs and she’d have to live with the results for a much longer period of time.) However, the streaks looked great with her blue eyes and she loved it. After our success with the streaks, we bleached all her hair blond. However, the bleaching wasn’t a good idea. As it grew out, it started to look bad when the roots got too long. When we tried to dye it back to her natural color we had a hard time finding a product that wouldn’t wash out after a few washings (even a permanent dye). So now she uses a shampoo for colored hair and we touch up the roots every couple of months. Because we have to keep re-coloring it, we’ve decided to have fun and have chosen dye colors in reds and burgandys. The burgandy that’s in her hair right now looks lovely and really compliments her skin color.
PS, I don’t know if you’ve already checked, but before you dye your daughter’s hair, you might want to find out if her school has any hair color rules. The hair color rule at my daughter’s junior high is that the kids can dye their hair, but it has to be a “hair color found in nature”. In other words, no pink or blue.
I say let her go for it. In the long run, if that’s the most out there thing she does, you’ll be lucky.
I first used “Glints” when I was in high school, and I didn’t notice anything. I don’t think they make that particular line anymore, though.
Speaking of, I’ve got to color my hair. My natural color is a dark dark brown that has almost NO highlights to it (except in the summer time), and it’s so dull looking. I’m going to dye it a bright coppery shade, like Donna on That '70s Show.
My son has straight black hair and a few years ago when he was 12 he wanted to dye the top of it blue for the summer. His mom didn’t want to have anything to do with it, so I said what the heck and helped him do it. First we had to bleach it, so he was a blond on top. He decided to leave it that color for a while. That night he went over to his cousin’s house to play board games. My sister’s family are all blonds and they had a good time harassing this new blond. “these are what we call dice. you roll them and then count the numbers of dots that end up on top . . .”
Then a week or so later we dyed it blue. It slowly turned green and then yellow and then grew out. He hasn’t wanted to do it again.
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