Balancing Your Teen's Self Expression With Your Own Common Sense

When the flavor of the month is flares instead of straight-legged jeans, parents don’t worry too much. However, when the coolest new thing involves making holes in assorted body parts or turning skin into artwork with tattoo designs, both of which are done with needles, parents tend to get a little tense.

Allowing your teen a certain amount of flexibility in his or her self-expression, with things like clothing and hair color is the key to overcoming this phase without long-term effects. In other words, it may be better to give in when they want to do something that may seem a bit odd as long as it's temporary, rather than having to battle it out over something more permanent.

Our parents were fortunate in that they rarely had to battle against teens and tattoos, belly rings and other piercings. Remind yourself of when you were younger, and realize that you probably weren't aware of how quickly trends changed either. Similarly, your teen may end up regretting that “really sweet” tattoo design when tats are no longer cool. So, consider letting your son wear that dog collar or whatever other strange adornment he comes up with; at least that is something he can take off easily.

That hole in your daughter’s navel will never close up completely, at least not without scarring, (not to mention the risk of infection) so you may want to go ahead and compromise on the pink hair if she promises to hold off on the belly ring. If pink isn’t her color, suggest purple, and try to have fun with it. In the grand scheme of things, a little purple hair is not a big deal.

Teens have to rebel and their personal style is often just one of the ways they do so. They have to break away from Mom and Dad and become their own person, and they frequently feel as if their bodies are about the only things they have control over.

The last thing you want to do as a parent is to push teens into exercising that control in self-destructive ways by stifling their sense of self-expression.

When you consider the alternative ways they can exercise their need for control (like through huge back-spanning tattoo designs or nose and lip rings that connect with a chain), dealing with some pink hair and some funky clothes doesn’t seem so bad.

Shanda Harper is a supporter of Tatto Designs dot com, a leading provider of downloadable tattoo designs. However, she also advocates responsible parenting and the informed purchase, application and care of the products available through the Tatto Designs website.


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