When Should a Girl Get Her Ears Pierced?

KEYS to Appeasement

Some months ago, L, age 5 at the time, started asking if she could get her ears pierced.

Her logic was simple, straightforward, and familiar. “It’s not fair,” she noted. “Some 1P kids (note: kindergarteners) have their ears pierced and I don’t.”

I suppose on a certain level, she’s right, and it isn’t fair. After all, how is it just that some kids get different things than other kids simply based on where they’re born and to whom they are born? Better not tell her about poverty.

(Note: A major difference between living in Switzerland and living in Northeast DC, is that I don’t actually have to discuss poverty in the same way with my kids. I talk about it with them—it’s important to understand—but it’s a lot more hypothetical here. In DC, we regularly saw rough-looking addicts stumbling down the street, tent cities, and people who had no obvious malady save for the grind of poverty. Since we have moved here, we have not had the occasional DC experience of my daughter asking about the man who was bleeding on the street while my wife called 9-1-1, and that’s not just because the emergency number here is 1-1-2. I’m not saying Switzerland doesn’t have addicts, after all people live here and people love drugs, but they are many fewer and they are much less prominent. My neighborhood here has many, many more tractors than poor people, though in fairness, that might be because there are 14 million tractors in Switzerland.)

She’s only six now, so we didn’t see any particular reason she should get her ears pierced, but we also didn't have a compelling reason that she shouldn’t. So we did what any thinking parent would and we tried to pass the buck. During her annual physical, we asked L’s pediatrician.

The pediatrician is of an old style that doesn’t really exist in the U.S. anymore. It’s not chickens for checkups, but I’m also not totally convinced she wouldn’t accept some chickens if I didn’t have insurance. (Note: Everyone in Switzerland has health insurance, so I can’t test this theory.). She’s not in a clinic or an office building full of other doctors. Rather, she has a small office, a cabinet, in our little town, in a mixed-use development. There she, and sometimes a nurse/receptionist, provide good care.

It reminds me a bit of my pediatrician growing up. His office was on the ground floor of his big, old house in suburban Boston. Sometimes his daughter served as receptionist, sometimes he answered his own phone, sometimes his dogs were in the exam room. He was superb.

I’ve been told by a German friend in town that our local pediatrician is a native of East Germany, but I don’t actually know. What I do know is that she practices in French—not English—though she clearly has some English, as she has shown when I can’t tell what the hell she is saying in French.

When we asked her “at what age should a kid get her ears pierced?” she gave—in French—the most unsatisfying answer possible. “C’est votre choix.” “It’s your choice.” Not helpful. She went on to say that there was no medical reason not to do it (note: or to do it), and that it was mostly a cultural issue.

I’m going to be stepping on so many of these going forward.

She was right, of course, but what the heck am I supposed to do with that information? Can I really explain to a 6-year-old that many Hispanic and Indian girls get their ears pierced very early, even as babies, because it’s their culture, but it’s not ours? Can I say that she is descended from stodgy wasps (note: love you in-laws!) on her mother’s side, and cranky Jews/Japanese/Germans on her father’s and early ear piercing is not really our thing? Her namesake, Granny L, never had her ears pierced. She would just attach pinchers on fancy occasions.

Perhaps I could do what my father did when my brother, at age 12 or so, asked to pierce an ear? He said, “Sure, but I’ll do it. I’ll get some ice and a needle.”

No, I couldn’t do that, because I don’t want to bluff. I don’t have the stomach for it. My father, by contrast, was absolutely not bluffing.

“Did you know how to do it?” I asked my dad yesterday.

No, but I could figure it out. I had ice and a needle.”

My brother did not get a pierced ear.

Ultimately, we decided that we had no good reason to refuse to let her get her ears pierced save a reflexive rejection of appeasement, but resisting appeasement is so last 70 years. Giving in to tyrants is in vogue again.

So we struck a deal. If she could get herself dressed in the morning, she could prove she was responsible enough to get her ears pierced.

It was a fair deal. She accepted. And then, like many beneficiaries of appeasement, she reneged on her side of the bargain.

Every morning remained a fight. She would stall; I would note that if I couldn't trust her to get dressed, I couldn’t trust her to be responsible enough to take care of pierced ears.

“But getting dressed is so boring,” she would retort.

“Then you won’t believe how boring applying ear medicine is,” I would respond.

After about 10 minutes of this, or maybe it was 30, she would scream “I want pierced ears and I don’t want to dress myself” and I’d have to give in or else miss getting her to school. Also, my son was dumping cereal on the floor somewhere in this scenario.

Eventually, we refined the deal. We would keep a calendar and when she had successfully dressed herself for 30 days—and they did not have to be in a row—she could get her ears pierced. This worked much better. Some days when she was running late, I’d try to help her get dressed and she would accuse me of trying to steal one of her 30 days.

It was working! There was only one problem.

“After I get my ears pierced, I’m never getting myself dressed again,” L declared. “You won’t be able to make me any more.”

Apparently, she had discovered game theory.

But a deal is a deal, and I had to hope that between getting her in the habit of dressing herself and my ability to conjure new deterrence, we could, in the post-piercing era, reach an acceptable détente.

Last week, before L finally went to get them pierced, she told a friend of mine, a Spanish guy, whose son goes to her school that she was getting her ears pierced.

“Want me to do it with ice and a needle?” he asked.

“That’s what my grandfather says,” L moaned.

My wife took her last Friday—I try to avoid seeing my children in pain, and if I have to invoke male privilege to do it, I am willing to do so. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll live with the shame. I clean up vomit, so it’s not like I don’t pull my weight.

According to my wife, L, after being very brave when not directly faced with the needle, got nervous when the time came to put point to lobe. Nevertheless, after she took a few minutes to calm down, she mustered her courage and got an ear done.

“I think I’m done,” she said, as the pain and shock set in.

This, of course, was not an option. A moment later, fortified by my wife refusing to let her leave looking asymmetrical, she did the second ear.

So far she’s been great about caring for her ears, and she’s even been pretty good about dressing herself.

The earrings are very cute, and I don’t think she’s traumatized. She’s already started asking about getting an upper-ear piercing. That’s how appeasement works.