My Sister Helped My Daughter Get a Tattoo!

[conuly]

My half sister is 19. I am in my 40s. As you can imagine, we do not have a lot in common, but have always had a pleasant and civil relationship—until last week.

My 16-year-old daughter has been begging us to let her get a tattoo for at least a year (in our area, you need an adult guardian’s permission unless you are over 18, which seems completely reasonable to me). She just wants to get the birthdate of her (deceased) little brother on her shoulder blade, which I am, of course, extremely sympathetic to. However, her father and I have been extremely clear that she can get this tattoo when she is 18, and not before.

Well, last week she came home with a fresh tattoo on her shoulder blade (to her credit, she did not try to hide it), and after some frantic and pointed questioning, she owned up that my half sister had filled out the permission paperwork and pretended to be her guardian. (Apparently the local tattoo parlor is not exactly running the world’s tightest ship.)

I am so angry. I can’t find it in me to be more than a little angry with my child, because it makes me tremendously sad to think of our loss, and I don’t want to yell at her for wanting a permanent reminder of his short life, even though she went behind our back and did so against our explicit instructions (she is extremely grounded, obviously).

I am angry at my sister. I made a scathing call to the tattoo parlor, which helped me work some of that out, but I just cannot shake my anger at my sister. What can I do here?

—Boiling

Dear Boiling,

Of course you are angry! This was a betrayal. And you are angry at the correct person, the adult who lied on the form and allowed your teenager to get a permanent body modification that you had explicitly forbidden her to get. Two years is a short time, but a very long time in terms of brain development, and although I suspect she will not really regret this tattoo, you were very right to tell her she had to wait until she no longer needed your permission.

You can be angry. It happened a week ago! You have not said if your sister has apologized, or if you think this was a “fuck you” designed to get your goat, or even if you have spoken to her since.

Take some time. Take enough time that you are not imagining punching her. Write her a really angry letter on paper and then burn it. When you are only angry, and not boiling, have a sit-down and tell her how you feel. Ask her what her thought process was. Tell her that this has obliterated, at least for a time, your trust in her. She is barely older than your daughter, and I hope that this will help temper your anger a little.

You need not go to your grave cursing her name. You do not need to end this relationship forever. But you do need to move forward having said your piece. She needs to know what a fuckup this was.

Time will make this easier. Don’t yell. Wait. Then talk.

I’m tremendously sorry for the loss of your son.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/09/forbidden-tattoos-care-and-feeding.html

Comments

[conuly]

I wonder if it might help LW to consider that her half-sister is barely older than her daughter. 19 year olds aren't all that more mature and sensible than 16 year olds, and in terms of relationship LW's half-sister is more like her daughter's cousin or friend than her aunt - and neither one of them has lived long enough to think of an additional two year wait for this memorial as anything other than forever. Two years to 40 year old Mom is 5% of her current lifetime. Two years to teenagers is more than 10% of their lifetime, a good third of which they can't remember. It looms much larger when you're younger.

[cimorene]

Yeahhhh, I mean, this is a LEGALLY responsible adult, but this isn't a person who has the life experience and the perspective of an adult, nor should you expect them to be as responsible as any other adult. Her sister is actually still a teenager! You can't be surprised by a 19-year-old agreeing with the 16-year-old; the surprising part is that she had the balls to pretend to be the 16-year-old's legal guardian and that the tattoo parlor bought it. I'm sure in 90% of cases this gambit would not work, and in most of them it wouldn't even occur to the kids to try.

But ultimately I feel like her anger is disproportionate given that her child is so close to being legal anyway. Kids at that age are very close to independence and it's not uncommon for them to take stabs at it - if their parents stand in their way, they just do it behind their backs. Certainly as far as those rebellions go, this is a pretty mild one with minimal harm to anyone.

[heavenscalyx]

Certainly as far as those rebellions go, this is a pretty mild one with minimal harm to anyone.

So much better than, say, dating 20- and 30-somethings because parents told her she was not allowed to date, period, until she was 18. (Yes, I know someone that happened to.)

[conuly]

Comment in wrong place oops

[conuly]

Yeah, the only real bad guy here is that tattoo parlor.

I wouldn't even frame this as rebellion, mild or otherwise, given exactly what sort of tattoo the kid got.

[ashbet]

I’d also be annoyed (as a tattooed mother of a tattooed daughter, no less — although she waited until she was 26 to get one), because of the undermining of a specific parental rule, but... they’re teenagers.

The 19-yr-old had to know it wasn’t okay with the parents, because she masqueraded as a guardian (which wouldn’t have been necessary, with parental consent.) I can’t see a way in which the 16-yr-old could have *deceived* her into doing it.

But, yeah, the natural consequences are grounding for the daughter, telling the aunt that you’re disappointed and don’t plan on giving them unsupervised time away from the house together for a while, and then let it go.

[movingfinger]

It's a minimal rebellion and it relates to bodily autonomy and a personalized expression of profound emotion. I feel that there's a control issue here on the parental side, and a failure of listening. She really, really wanted this, it was very important to her, and the parents really could have rolled with that. Maybe the 16 YO can be given/trained in handling more independence and responsibility around substantial matters, with less parental hovering.

Tattoos are removable these days. The shrilling about "PERMANENT BODY MODIFICATION" can be set aside, especially for a small shoulderblade tattoo. (Does the 16 YO have pierced ears, I wonder. This argument used to happen around that in many families.)

As for the 19 YO, lying about guardianship is a big deal, but without knowing more about the family dynamic, it's hard to see this as malicious or more than wanting to be the cool older friend with car keys and money.

[minoanmiss]

Yes, this.

[lemonsharks]

Said better than I would have been able to.

Parents are clearly angrier about being disobeyed than about the tattoo.

[heavenscalyx]

I wonder if daughter TOLD aunt that her parents had refused permission for this? Also, aunt is awfully close to having all sorts of permission refused to her for apparently arbitrary reasons, and has just had the freedom to do all the things she was ordered not to -- possibly wanted to share this with niece. But yeah, half-sister is still a teen with undeveloped executive function. Yeah, be angry, but be aware this is not like a 30-something doing this.

[conuly]

I wouldn't even use the words "aunt and niece" to describe their relationship except if I had to speak officially. I'd call them "cousins" because a. it's more apt and b. I have cousins (mom's generation) who are aunt and niece to each other despite being nearly the same age and that explanation drives everybody batty. They always called themselves cousins or sisters, apparently, when they were young just for ease of conversation.

[ayebydan]

I think this is a blown out of proportion type of problem.

Basically, all aspects could be worse.

[cereta]

All aspects could be worse, but the principle is worth enforcing, IMHO. I think the LW is right not to punish her daughter or make a big deal of her getting that tattoo. But the same point that everyone is using to excuse the aunt (and I agree with it) is why I think LW needs to have a talk with her and, at least for now, limit the time her sister spends with her daughter without her or the daughter's father present. It is true that at 19, the aunt probably does not have much more mature judgment than the niece. That makes it all the more important that she knows not to override the parents' wishes, with very, very few exceptions. The fact that there are exceptions (helping a minor obtain contraception; helping a queer minor avoid things like conversion therapy) make it all the more necessary to abide by parents' wishes in smaller matters, so that those exceptions remain about matters of serious principle and not about contradicting the parents.

I'm not going to lie: if one of her many adult friends/family overrode my and/or her father's decision about something, even (or maybe especially) something as minor as seeing a particular movie, I'd be pretty annoyed, and I would worry about what else they would disregard. She's our kid, and I obviously believe that we're best suited to make the decisions she's not ready to make yet. Of course, we have also (NGL) put the tattoo age at 18. I could see us making exceptions to that (a memorial for a deceased loved one would probably be one), but I wouldn't be best pleased if someone else made it.

[shirou]

Well said.

[tielan]

This.