To Pierce or Not to Pierce

Q My 13-year-old daughter wants me to sign an authorisation to have body piercings done. She wants nose-, lip-, tongue-, nipple-piercings, well you name it she wants them all. The one reputable studio in town requires a parent’s signature for minors. I find piercings so unattractive and have tried all kinds of tactics to talk my daughter out of the idea. No success. If anything she wants them even more now. I am quite certain that if I do not sign the paper she will just have them done in a sleazy place.
Maria Olson, Edmonton

A. You are lucky she does not want tattoos!  It looks like you do not have much choice in the matter. The most responsible action to take will probably be signing this paper. But before you do that don’t miss the wonderful opportunity this situation has to become more intimate with your daughter. You have tried talking her out of it already and she obviously was not willing to agree with your considerations. She most likely expected you to have them and the moment she felt you tensing up around the subject she closed down inside and resorted to her stubborn, hard self. Then you both found yourselves in hard shells with very little apparent love.

She sounds like quite a responsible young woman, otherwise she wouldn’t care about going to the ‘safe’ place to have the piercings done. So you are not in such a bad spot, since she really needs you for this.

Rather than wanting to change your daughter’s attitude, why don’t you see where you are unnecessarily hard with yourself and her. This is not about the piercings. It is about you having to let go of control over your daughter’s life,  and let go of pictures you have about who she should be. Here is a wonderful opportunity for you to become vulnerable and honest with yourself. What are you holding on to? How do you want your daughter to be different and why? What are you afraid will happen? Take a moment and enquire, be really honest and yet gentle with yourself.

You will know the right moment to talk to your daughter again. This time it will be a talk about YOU not HER. Be honest with her, authentic rather than strategic. Whether she has the piercings done is out of your hands. To let her into your life is in your hands. Don’t be dramatic about this, just open and straight. Share your fears, admit your distrust in her making a good decision in this respect. Expose your fear of having failed as a mother and your worry what other people will think.

Take responsibility for it, don’t put it on her.

Remember you don’t do this because you secretly wish that that would sway her mind away from the piercings. She would immediately detect such strategic emotional behaviour and detest you for it. Take it as an opportunity to be genuine, not a victim but a tender human being continuously changing and adjusting to the different challenges life offers. Don’t expect a huge big breakthrough but be quiet enough inside so that you detect the little openings that happen in your relating with your daughter. This may be just a softening in the way she looks at you for a moment. It is the little doorways that lead to reality shifts.

Then tell her that you want her to be accountable. Ask her to get information about piercings. Surf the internet together. Make a date to go to the library together and check out books on this subject. Find out the long-term effects, go to the piercing studio together and talk to the experts. Turn this situation into something you share rather than fight about. If your friends ask you if you are really that interested in piercings, you can tell them, ‘No, but I am that interested in my daughter!’

Make the research a condition for you signing the paper.  It has to be clear that the outcome is irrelevant to your signing. It has to be understood that it will be up to your daughter to make the final decision. You have to extend that kind of trust. Let her be in charge, not conditionally, really.

The more informed she is, the more she feels your trust in her, the more authentic her decision of where she wants to be pierced will be. For all you know, once she sees that she does not have to be reactive, the amount of piercings she wants may go down. Maybe once you get into the groove you’ll go along with her and have a piercing done too!

This time has the potential to be remembered by both of you as a time when your relationship deepened, the time when your hearts got pierced.