Inmates Running the Asylum

I have a friend who has a lot of great one liners.  This is one of my favorite.  "The job of a teenager is to try to get away with stuff.  My job as a parent is to stop them."  It really is at least 4 years of yin and yang.   Parents with older children continuously threaten my naivete with "just you wait, never say never or not my kid".  I get that.  But whatever happened to just saying "no".  No is hard.  Why is "no" not good enough?   We live in a world of "yes".  What happened to "I'm the adult, you're the child"?  What happened to "because I said so"?  Do these not work?  Are there not privileges and material goods that we bestow on our teenagers that can be taken away?  Are there no punishments for teenagers?  Please say that ain't so!!

My daughter recently got second piercings in both her ears.  That didn't bother me.  She wanted her nose pierced.  I said no.  I try to check myself and not be judgemental or just old fashioned.  There's something about a nose piercing on a young girl that screams, "I'm a bad ass".  Same goes for boys with pierced ears.  It screams to me, "I'm naughty, I want to be like Eminem, I can carry a keg".  So why shouldn't boys have the same artistic expression that girls are entitled to?   Pierced ears is supposed to be pretty.  Can someone tell me if pierced ears on a boys means anything other than "I'm cool or worse, I wanna be cool?"  I think there is a very fine line between artistic expression and marking your body at an early age just to be cool.  Give me a better reason than everyone does it. 

So, yes I have a tattoo.  I got it when I was 40.  It truly was/is an artistic expression of who I am.  It makes me feel special.  I did it for me.  I'm old enough to handle any repercussions.

Tattoos and piercings are permanent.  I just don't know of many teenagers that are mature enough to make that permanent commitment.  They can't possibly know where their life is going to take them.  The world is judgemental.  We make judgements on appearance every day.   They're so many things to fight over, I guess you have to pick your battles. Maybe tattoos and piercings are not something worth fighting over.   I say as long as I'm paying the bills, I get to be the boss.  I say that if parents are afraid to say no, we'll just have inmates running the asylum.  Please join me in saying no, meaning it, and what the heck enjoying it!!