Questions about letting my daughter get her ears pierced

[usernameOct2025]

I was never allowed to get my ears pierced because my big sister had an earring riped out of her ear. My daughter is 10 and she wants to get her ears pierced. I told her yes.

I wouldn't want to past down my fear of earrings to my daughter. But because I have been scared of the idea of wearing earrings, I don't much about them. Does the procedure to get them pierced hurt ? Does she wear earrings after the procedure ? How to prevent them from getting infected ? Long after the procedure, are earrings safe to sleep in. Are they safe to shower with ?

If you're reading this post, you can stop here and still be able to give good answers. I'm also wondering about getting my own ears pierced. If I did, I would have very similar questions. I don't want the fear brought up by what happened to my sister to stop me. A question about earrings that is only relevant for adults is are they safe to wear while having sex ? I'm sorry if I seem incredibly naive. I know the phobia sounds silly. Any advice will be appreciated.

It's usual for school to enforce removal for PE to avoid what happened to your sister. I'm 53 and have to remove mine to play netball, it's league policy to avoid accidental injury.
I never understand the MN anti-Claires thing. I had mine done at a Claires (admittedly I was an adult by then) and found them really good. Full of advice, was sent home with a large bottle of cleaning solution to use for the first few weeks and had no issues at all.
I wear small gold studs and leave them in all the time (except for the aforementioned netball) - sleep, shower, anything, really.

example policy doc

Maybe it's because I'm in the US, I don't know. Her school definitely don't have rules like that.

I could ask her, for my own peace of mind, to not wear earrings when she's exercising or doing sports.

Well that would explain it! Maybe you might have mentioned it in the original post

I just replied to someone else saying that maybe I could ask my daughter, for my own peace of mind, to not wear earrings during exercising or sports.

My daughter may or may not know what happened to her aunt. I never wanted to pass my fears down to her.

Since you’re in the US and have a super-long summer holiday, why don’t you push this back until the summer? They say 6 weeks without removing the first studs, but 8 is definitely better. You can say it’s to mark going from elementary school to middle school.

You do need to manage them carefully but it’ll be fine.

She's already back in school.

US schools are definitely not going to have some of the ridiculous policies schools have here.

my DDs school have a no earrings for PE policy but are fine with no plasters on freshly pierced ears, in fact there has been far more injuries with girls hurting themselves when pulling the tape off. Also she’s not once been told to take her earrings out this term, it only appears to happen when certain staff, mainly leadership team take PE. DDs teacher is a very sporty person, plays a lot of team and contact sports and just says it’s fine when the kids ask if they need to take earrings out or tape them. To note kids wear their pe kits to school so no changing required and there is no contact sports.

What kind (if any) earrings are safe for sports .

Mine just wear basic studs but you can get clear retainer earrings if you want,

My daughter and I got our ears pierced this morning. People here were right, it didn't hurt one bit.