At what age should a parent give their kid permission to get their ears pierced?



Hell I don't know, it was a rhetorical question .... I am just pleased that they still feel the need to ask me for permission before they mutilate their body parts!

Thankfully I was being asked for permission of ears being pierced and not more extreme body parts, even MORE thankfully it was Smallest Baby Cloggy who was doing the asking and she is a girl child of the species. If it had been one of the Baby Boy Cloggys I would of sent them to their Auntie Sarah to ask permission and provide justification as she can calmly, reasonably debate the pros and cons of this kind of stuff before she slams the big fat NO hammer down on any such ill-conceived idea's. I, on the other hand, would just ground the little feckers and remove any access to their pocket money.

Smallest Baby Cloggy is 10, I had been holding out on the ear piercing thing hoping that she would get to 12 as that was the age when my Mother allowed me to get ear junk. I realised that the day would eventually come but  wanted her to want it for herself and not because all the rest of the girls in her class had baubles in their ears.

Today she gave a well thought out presentation of why I should allow her to get her ears pierced and I relented. She didn't even flinch as the nail gun forced the gold studs through her ears at a hundred gazillion miles an hour and spent a full 20 minutes checking out her new ear junk in the mirror before she allowed us to leave. She was incredibly happy and proud and I was incredibly happy and proud for her.

(Cloggy had not understood my standoff in the matter of ear piercing and had previously told his daughter that she could have it done if "Mama agreed".)

"Don't tell Papa", she said, "Lets see how long it takes him to see that I have had my ears pierced"!
 
It took Cloggy a full 10 minutes to realise that his daughter had holes in her ears as opposed to him taking a full 5 weeks to realise that I had changed my contact lenses and had green eyes instead of brown.

My baby girl is growing up! I guess you can protect them for as long as you can but at some point you need to trust that as a Mother you have done a good job and give them the freedom to make their own choices. Today was the first step with Smallest Baby Cloggy, there is a long way to go before I cut her completely loose in this world but I believe that when I do cut her loose she will thrive in what ever vocation she chooses. 

All Hail to Baby Girls! (And their Mothers)