Well, in our house, we tend to be quite a bit more liberal than our kids, much to their embarrassment.
However, the rule that we tend to follow is this: anything non-permanent, like piercings, hair coloring, odd styling (mohawk, etc.) are all things that you are allowed to do when you are old enough to have a job and pay for them. No use of holiday money- the key is accountability.
As for tats, none before 18, whether you pay for them or not. It’s a fairly permanent decision, so I don’t think that it’s odd to ask that a young person hold off until their age of majority. Of course, I suppose that my boys could go behind my back…but then we’d have to have a long talk with Mr. Belt-Sander to see if we could get rid of the tat.
Now, as for the OP- your ex is an asshat. However, I’m troubled by your response- it seems like neither of you are thinking about your son very much. Turning a kid into a proxy warzone for your beef with his dad is not cool. That said, I don’t know that I could keep to the high road myself in this situation, so I can’t really make a moral judgment.
Hey Ellis, Brutus…do you two have kids? I really hope not, because as misleading and “uncivilized” as piercings, dyes and clothing can be, I think living in your stifling control-freak worlds would suck.
I wore combat boots and shorts with heavy metal shirts to school in the 90’s. I grew my hair long and my beard as well. When I turned 18, I got my left ear pierced. Twice. Over the next 4 or 5 years I pierced my right ear two times and then my left ear once more.
Now, almost 10 years later, I wear polo shirts and slacks, I haven’t worn my earrings but once in a year, and the only time you’ll catch me in a rock shirt is when I’m changing the oil in one of my cars. I’m sure all of that “uncivilized” self-expression and experimentation has stunted me for a thousand years.
Just FTR, this boring old lawyer has had a hoop in his left lobe the past 25 years or so. I used to take it out for courtroom work, but I figured as soon as I opened my yap I’d be giving the judges lots more to get pissed about than an earring!
My son wanted one to be “like his old man!” We had him wait until 5th grade ended so he wouldn’t have to deal overmuch with the assholes at his grade school.
His favorite line is to say that of course the earring means he’s gay. The only distinction is whether you are dominant or submissive. Hell, I thought his grandfather was gonna explode when he heard that!
And both of my daughters have their ears double pierced. I think as early as 4th grade.
Sure seems pretty low on the scale of things for a parent to get excited about. But I guess every parent draws his own lines.
Well, I must admit that I never expected her to actually earn that kind of money. But she designed the tat herself and looked at it for two years, making little artistic adjustments now and then. But when she told me she had the money and would I come sign the release and talk to the guy, well, I had promised and keeping my word was more important than the art a short sleeved shirt will hide…
Point of order, Spiff; ya have to be married to the guy in the first place to be divorced.
As for the rest of your post, explain how you think we’re “fighting via our child.” The earring was something the boy had talked about wanting for a long time, money’s tight around here, and it’s not often I get a chance to indulge the boy in something he wants just because he wants it. Dink and his dad ganged up on my son, spouted a bunch of homophobic bullshit, and removed his earring (they didn’t ask HIM to remove it, THEY removed it). Am I not allowed to be extremely pissed off at this? As I believe I stated before, I’ve had a fairly amicable relationship with they boy’s father since I was 13 years old. Oh, gee, it’s been 17 years and we’ve had a disagreement. Someone call DFS, obviously we’re unfit parents. :rolleyes:
Behold!! The Troglodyte spews forth yet more pearls of wisdom and knowledge for us to snicker and guffaw at!!!
How exactly do you know this, Brutus, dear? Do you have some sort of ESP-like link with the minds of every single child all over the world?
Peer pressure?!?!
Yeah, that’s exactly what caused me to get an earring back in 10th grade.
I can still remember when that group of evil juniors and seniors slammed me up against the locker bank and screamed in my face that if I didn’t have my ear pierced by tomorrow, I’d get a “swirlie” every day.:dubious: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I find it amazing that someone as utterly full of shit as you are hasn’t been harvested for fertilizer yet. Ah well, there’s always hope that tommorow will be the blessed day for you.
Marlitharn, my dad went with me when I got my ear pierced and my mom was more upset then he was when we came home.
When my dad tells the story of that day, my favorite part has always been him saying, that the whole thing was an example of “choosing your battles.”
Okay, maybe you can use this as a way to teach your son how to “pick your battles” and something called “being the better person” and and “give and take” and “keeping the peace.”
Let him have the double piercing. Make sure it heals up.
Then explain to him that his father and grandfather are closed-minded, bigoted individuals and that the earring bothers them. Explain further than when he goes to his father’s house, it would be better if he just removes the earring. Make sure he knows that he (your son) is “being the better person” by keeping his mouth shut and the earring out when he’s there.
There is something called “being a grown-up” where you just shut up and pick your battles. Avabeth, sex bracelets are those thin, jelly-type plastic bracelets that the kids wear (that Madonna made popular back in the 80s). If a boy breaks one off a girl’s wrist, she owes him a sexual favor, depending on the color (a hug or a kiss or more). Many schools have banned them.
Ava- a so-called ‘sex bracelet’ is one of those skimpy plastic multi-colored jelly bracelets that were popular in the 80s and have made a comeback. (I had a ton of them.)
Somehow, somewhere, some kid offhandedly remarked that each color meant some sort of sex act and if a boy came over and broke said bracelet, that act would occur. Of course this ballooned into national hysteria and many schools have now banned the bracelets, even though most kids have no idea that’s what they supposedly mean.
My father (retired navy) told stories while I was growing up. I seem to remember one of those stories about pierced ears. If I remember correctly. The left ear of a man was pierced when he crossed the Meridian dateline. It was a status symbol of sorts. It had nothing to do with sexual preferences.
In other cultures when a boy entered his teens the rights of manhood would be under taken. Depending on the culture it would be anywhere from tatooing, to piercings to other types of body “beautification”. So what is the big deal about a 13 year old male getting an earring? It could have been much worse depending on where you are in the world.
Fight big, Marli. I got my left ear pierced at 16 and the right double pierced at 17. If my dad had tried to physically remove them, there would have been a much nastier scene than just my mom phoning him. As it was, he just shook his head, called me a goof, and forgot about it. (He had gotten into a vicious feud with his father when he was young about… get this… a beard.)
(While we’re telling stories, though, he did freak out when I dyed my hair black… which was odd because 1) I was no longer living at home and 2) my hair is very dark brown anyway; he wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t told him.)
If, once the piercings have healed, his father expresses an asinine wish that the boy not wear jewelry when he’s down there, neither I nor the boy will have a problem with that; the boy, being fully aware that he still has to follow mine and his father’s rules no matter how stupid he thinks they are (or how stupid we think the other parent’s rules are, although I must say this is the first time we’ve had a disagreement of this kind), will just roll his eyes and comply. As it was, he had only had the earring in about a week when his father took it out, and the hole slammed shut like a nun’s knees at a Tailhook convention.
I’ve given up on the phone. I’ll see him in a couple of weeks, at which time I may just have to remind him of a certain occasion in high school when he thought it would be bitchin’ to bleach his hair. He was wrong then, too.
Or you can choose not to be a fucking asshole, even if a lot of people are. Crazy thought, I know.
You might be amazed too, to learn that transgendered individuals can be just as successful as anyone else. You might well know some and not even realize it.
If you take BiblioCat’s suggestion, you would not be fighting via your child.
Otherwise, yes.
You have a right to be mad – your ex is being a jerk. You also have a responsibility not to use your child’s body as a battleground. That’s the route your ex took – you can rise above that.
That’s horribly sad KellyM, I’m truly sorry. Hell, with all the will in the world I can’t understand my parents, they seem designed to drive me to apoplexy, but it would crush me if they wouldn’t/couldn’t speak to me.
Your post reminds me that bigotry would be bad, bad, bad if it only hurt some other “them”, but the thing is, it hurts us all. No one is enobled or elevated by bigotry. Everybody is diminished by it and everybody pays for it – the bigot, the victim, everyone who stands by and does nothing, and everyone who does their best to stand tall to it, even they can’t just shrug off that hurt.
