All of my favorite radio stations have been talking about “Kim Kardasian” and how she pierced her baby’s ears too early in life, on their morning shows, and I have to say that I am really surprised with what their callers had to say.  I heard a lot about how it should have been her daughter’s decision and I have to say that while I respect their thoughts, I disagree.  Before you get upset, let me explain my reasoning.

I didn’t have my own ears pierced until I was seven.  I actually had to beg my mother to let me get my ears pierced.  The reason behind this was that my mother took me to the local beauty salon and asked the “evil hairstylist”, to cut my hair to my shoulders and she instead chopped it off to just below my ears.  I remember to this day how the hairstylist kept making comments about it not being even as she cut it higher and higher.  When it was over and I was wearing pants I looked just like a boy.  It was devastating for me.  I remember being in line to go to the restroom with the rest of the girls from my class and the hall monitor stopped me and telling me to use the boys restroom.

“But I’m a girl.”  I said.

“If you’re a girl, then where are your earrings?”  She replied.

While this would be considered an insensitive action on her part in today’s world, I get where she was coming from.  In the early eighties there was a lot less effort put into watching what we said or did for that matter.  From this point on, I would only wear dresses to school and begged my mother to take me to get my ears pierced.  My mother was a little old fashioned in her ways and wanted to wait until I was older.  She finally gave in to my numerous requests.  After this incident, I swore that when I had a daughter i would pierce her ears as a baby and found that there were a few good reasons behind doing this, besides it being for appearance. The major reason for my decision was that as an adult, I can still remember getting my own ears pierced.  The worst feeling in the world, was after they pierced the one side with the gun, waiting for them to come around and do the other side.  I knew that by piercing my daughters ears as a baby, she would never remember the piercing itself.  At three months old I took her to get her ears pierced, the beauty of this is that she was small enough that she didn’t try to pull them out.  The “Claire’s” I went to, only asked that she had her first set of immunizations before they would do it.I found that by leaving her earrings in for a year allowed her to have the holes, whether or not she went for years without wearing earrings, and this is exactly what happened.  At about seven years old she decided that she didn’t want to wear earrings any more.  She didn’t start wearing them again until she was twelve and when she was ready, the holes were there and there was no pain involved.  For this reason, my personal opinion is that it is best to get children’s ears pierced when they are young, what do you think?