Ear piercing dilemma - 11 year old

[Jeosn]

My daughter is about to start secondary school and is desperate to have her ears pierced. There are exactly 6 weeks until the start of term. The school do a lot of sport and say no taping is allowed. Earrings must be removed for every PE games lesson and sports club. Is 6 weeks too soon for her to remove and reinsert the earrings by herself at school? I'm concerned that it is. The problem is there is no good time. But maybe she will manage better when she is a bit older.

With good aftercare it should be fine. If they close up after 1 day without them then you'll at least have tried and can revisit them the next summer.

It’s an absolute pain trying to time it, short of waiting until they leave school. Ours has a rule of no earrings at any time (not just for sport). We have 9 weeks holiday so got them done at the very beginning. The piercing place said 9 weeks wasn’t really long enough. However, we had no choice but to take them out. She uses clear studs (you can get flexible clear ones), although does sometimes get told off for them. You can barely see them.

I would definitely recommend getting them done with a needle (not any type of gun, regardless of what the jewellers tell you!). We’ve had no problems whatsoever and they’ve healed really well.

The only thing I would say is that I wouldn’t wear anything, even clear ones, for contact sports (including netball).

DD had hers done at the end of Y5 and had absolutely no issues getting them in and out again by the end of the summer holiday. It takes a bit of practice but she had a vested interest in working it out! The silicone clear studs are also great, she recently had her helix done and used one for county netball trials as it was still healing and it wasn’t noticed.

I followed that guidance and got really sore ears. We were also told to turn the studs! Ouch. Modern advice is to leave them alone and leave them in for much longer.

🤣🤣🤣

As a netball umpire can I just say it not being noticed really shouldn’t be the goal. Not being allowed earrings in for netball is basic safety for the wearer, there’s a very real chance of it being caught on someone else’s clothing and being ripped out. I am surprised that your daughter isn’t aware of this if she’s playing county netball. (I’d be less concerned about 11 year olds playing netball in a PE lesson, tape would usually be ok in this situation.)