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

[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.