Daughter (13) has pierced own ears

[EllaMozarella]

Hello MN,
Noticed this eve that instead of 2 earrings in each ear, my child now has 3…
Pierced her ‘3rds’ herself on Friday, used a needle which she cleaned with anti-bac gel. 😮
I was really angry & immediately confiscated her phone, cancelled her plans for after school tomorrow, made her clean the bathroom & have an early bedtime. Now I just feel really surprised that she did it herself & hid it for 4 days… HOW?
AIBU to be cross, & mega disappointed (I am also relieved she hasn’t had any infections…. Yet!?)

Of all the potentially dangerous things teens can do this is very low on the list to get het up about. I got to the point where if they weren't doing drugs then I was hard pushed to get angry. The least teens have to push back against the better.

Omg. How did she get the guts to do that to herself??? I once got a piercing kit online simply to reopen a slightly healed over second piercing and it took me half an hour to get the guts to do it and it was only going through a layer of skin about a mm thick. Her going through an entire ear lobe with a needle makes me feel ill. Anyway, fair play to you, OP, for listening to the Mumsnet advice about it not being the end of the world.

It's just gristle mainly, once you get through the outer bit it doesn't hurt.

Where down below? I've never heard of it!

Numb it first with ice.

Mine is the clit hood.
But you can have other parts done.

I don't think anyone's suggesting it's safe or sensible to pierce your own ears with a sewing needle in your teens. It's not. It is, however, very normal.

It's something that's been happening for about a hundred years, will likely keep on happening, and rarely results in anything more serious than a gunky earlobe that needs dousing in TCP. Yeah, in an ideal world it wouldn't happen, but an ear piercing is a tiny and largely inconsequential injury and while it's certainly proportionate to point out to the teenager that they've been a complete idiot, it's not an indication that the child is some kind of delinquent horror and is not likely to cause them any real problems.

Meh, couldn't get worked up about this, as long as she's keeping them clean.
I pierced mine myself when I was the same age by just pushing an earring though my ear.

It’s a rite of passage I think. I wouldn’t be that bothered.