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I would have grounded him. What kind of mesage are ou sending him that he can do that to himself? If I had kids, I weould never let them do that. He should be punished. In my opinion anyway. I think teenagers get away with way way too much these days.

If I had grounded him, would that stop his desire to have a pierced lip? Would it undo the piercing?

I think if you walked through a middle or high school, and saw the frequency of piercings and multiple piercings, you would be amazed at how common lip, belly, tongue, and eyebrow piercings are.
It's a style, and if I make a huge deal out of it, it will only increase the lure.

Oh, the memories . . .

I got my ears pierced when I was 17, on the sly, because my mom said no. My best friend did the piercing with ice, alcohol and a big sewing needle, having watched an adult friend of hers do several piercings. Everybody amateur-pierced then. I trusted her degree of carefulness and brushed aside the fact that she did not have a strong stomach. She did fine. My ears were so frozen I felt NO pain. My parents found out at the two-week mark, and lectured me about deceit. I did get some infection, which I admitted to no one, but I just kept on with the alcohol treatment and everything eventually healed fine. I wear earrings almost daily to this day. :)

Yikes!! That picture of tongue piercing gave me the shivers...

I understand what your son was going through, just as you did. I wanted pierced ears in the worst way, and my mom didn't relent until I was thirteen. Then she got her ears pierced again (two in each ear), and I sooo wanted to do mine too. She said no. Boy, was I mad! So, I went without her. And she pretty much had the same reaction that you had with your son.

I think the key thing to remember is that you know your son, just as my mom knew me. And in the grand scheme of things, this wasn't so bad. :)

Wow...Mary's statement says it all "if I had kids..."

That's all I'm gonna say about THAT, cause this IS your blog Anne!

As for piercings, I used reverse psychology, cause ya know, I got the smarts REAL good!

I told my daughter when she was about eleven, that when she got old enough, she could have her belly-button pierced. I told her how much it hurt (yes, from experience), but that it would be REAL cool.

I then patted myself on the back for being so much dang smarter than my oldest was....UNTIL SHE TURNED 14!

Then she told me she was old enough, and wanted that done for her birthday.

HOLY CRAP! Nobody told me that reverse psychology was a crock of crap!

What could I do? On her birthday, I took my daughter, her best friend, and my niece to a piercing place and had it done professionally.

No infection, no problems, and it is cute.

So much for reverse psychology...another parental lesson learned!

:) Terri

aww your sons piercing looks good & he sounds and looks like a good kid. Your kinda like my mom. I remember when my older brother wanted to get his left ear pierced when he was about 13 and my mom ofcourse said no but he begged so much that she dicided to take him to get it done professionally ....a few months later he wanted to pierced the other side but my mom again said no a day later he pierced it himself and showed us. We just laughed and called him krazy. He's now 18 and both ear piercings looks very good!
I'm 16 and I did the same with my belly piercing this summer but done professionally. i begged for at least a year but my mom and dad said no and lectured me about how im too young.... untill i got it with my close cousin...i couldn't help showing my mom a day later because i was excited and we was a few days from going to the beach anyway...she looked at me and laughed and said "i wanted to go see you get it :("..i felt a little bad after because she's like my best friend and i wanted her there but she did let me know it was wrong going without her but she said that it is my body and she respects that as long as im happy...now she wants one too! i guess once kids become teens they should be allowed to get piercings if thats what makes them happy and be responsible for their own consiquences. Some parents dont want their children making the same mistake they did when they were young but they need to know that they wont make the same mistakes...they'll make their own as they mature.

Seems like piercing is a rite of passage to a lot of folks -- almost everyone has a "piercing" story to share.

For Marcia, you did it on the sly, and still got the deceit lecture. My son did it fairly openly and got a similar lecture - so parents' responses haven't changed much. I think part of it is letting kids have more control over what goes on with their bodies- and if you extend that idea out a bit, you can see why parents sort of universally freak.

So Tabitha, you rebelled with piercing also. See, this really does seem like a statement to parents; none of us said, "Oh, lovely dear, your piercings." And yet we all did something similar...

And Terri - I never got that reverse psych thing to work either. My kids are immune to it. I think it only works for the offspring of child psychologists. Or maybe Super Nanny.

Thanks to Babii3-J for stopping by!
I especially love hearing from teenagers (not necessarily my own).
I have to confess - belly piercings make me shiver. On the beach I look away when I see girls with them and my kids always laugh. Something about it...tongues are mildly weird to me, but navels are...too fragile or something, too connected to the inner body. (What if the tiniest bit of intestine slipped through that? See, that's the way I think, so I can't handle navel piercings).
And yes, parents have a really hard time with the teen control over their own body idea. Maybe that's the whole lure of piercing.