Hair removal and girls - how young is too young?

I worked at laser hair removal places, and this is common. The moms wnat hairles females by puberty! It is America!

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I remember asking my mom to let me shave juss days be4 my tweleth birthday. I BEGGED TO DEATH until she looked at me and said okay. After my legs were shaved No one called me "hairy legs" I remember When i first noticed the hair. i was 9 and i was sitting in between my mom and dad. i grabbed my leg and compared them to my dad and i was like dad look! we MATCH. my mom started dying from laughter lmfao then i compared my leg to my mom and i was like u have no hair. Then i told her thats pretty. she got worried. My mom started to think i was thinking about my body too much since everytime she looked at me watching spongebob, she caught my attention to my arms one day, and my legs the next. Lmaoo when im a mother 10 years from now, ill let my daughter shave/wax anytime SHE wants too. But sometimes i think that i want her to shave be4 shes teased. i dnt wanna make the mistakes my mom made (thats what i believe my mom made a mistake with my early ages) But im thinking too far in the future. LOL bye everyone i read every comment there was for this article since i like hearing stories related to my problems:]

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there is a huge difference between a twelve or thirteen year old kid going through puberty and a six year old child who has no idea body hair is a 'flaw'. children have much thinner and more sensitive skin that teenagers, and i can't understand how that little girl could come away from a waxing without severe burns and open wounds. as an adult i think that stuff is extremely hot and abrasive. thinking about how i would have felt getting waxed at six makes me want to cry.

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I am rather shocked at so many mothers’ refusing to allow their daughter's to shave their legs, arms, underarms, etc. What in the world are you stopping her for? Are you afraid of her changing body? Your reaction certainly implies that and speaks volumes to her making her feel ashamed of her changing body. How sad!
When my hair started growing in at 9 years, shortly after my period started at 8, and I'd had breasts not long prior to that, my grandmother bought me a lady's electric razor set to shave my legs. I saw how to use it and the choice was mine, versus having 4 inches of underarm hair that embarrassed me and subjected me to teasing. Why is it so appealing to so many mother's to force their daughter's not to shave? Do you think that you are preventing them from growing up? It is happening and the kinder and more understanding and helpful you are the more likely your daughter is to trust you with vastly bigger issues later on.
I am of Scottish decent and dark hair runs in our family. So I have waxed, and am planning on laser hair removal in the near future.
My baby girl was born with dark hair on her ears. I thought it was adorable but anticipated the comments people would make and did make. It fell out after a couple of weeks and has not returned.
She has dark hair on her back and yes when she starts getting closer to puberty and I see it concerns her or she asks me about it, then I am fine helping her get laser hair removal if she wants it.
She will be given a razor as I was and told how to use it. If she wants to let the hair grow in fine, if not she has the tools she needs to remove the unwanted hair.
I will love her either way, but I will never try to suppress her changing body by withholding information and tools that could help her be a happy young lady. Don't sweat the small stuff instead embrace it.

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Your children are supposed to be beautiful even if someone else thinks they aren't. When I was a teen I worked at a state Mental Facility that housed infants to adults who were placed there. Some of the children I was privileged to take care of may have been considered "ugly" by some but they were beautiful to me. One baby looked as if someone had drawn a line down her face splitting it in half. Half of the face was disfigured. The other part was not. I learned a lot from that little girl. She had a wonderful personality and loved to be cuddled (if I recall she was 14 or 15 months). I did my best to spend as much time as I could with her. What is wrong with a little hair? I can understand wanting to help. But shouldn't you show your daughter how beautiful she is no matter what? Sounds to me like the mother involved has problems with HER self image. Not her daughter

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I guess what's coming to mind here for me is this... You want to teach your girls that looks don't matter. I am good with that, but teach by example. Don't go over to little Jane jr. with a unibro, and tell her looks are not important, and then at the same time spend an hour applying make up and fussing with your hair, or spend a fortune on the latest fashions. If you own a curling iron, straightener; throw it out. Celebrate your first gray, don't dye by golly who cares what you look like? If you can't back up that of which you guide, then what you tell them will go in one ear and out the other.

Lastly take care of your own, and then butt out... It is really all a matter of opinion, everyone has one, but not everyone is right. Unless the subject in question is getting abused, neglected or put into mortal danger, it really isn't any of you business.

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waxing, shaving, threading, laser, these techniques, when really done correctly, are safe. If a little girl has underarm hair what exactly is the harm in teaching her or assisting her to remove it, that is, of her own free will. if you feel embarassed that your kid has hair but she doesnt mind it then respect that. if she is older and still doesnt care ridding hair and its obvious you probably want to talk to her about appropriate shaving once a girl reaches a certain age. i shaved mii legs at around 12 and there still wasnt much to shave lol but not every1 is like that. unless it posesses some kind of danger, the connection between age and hair removal should be irrelevant, as long as the child is OK with it. well thats mii speech lol =)

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My daughter is now 7 years old. I have allowed her to wax just between her eyebrows to get rid of her uni-brow for a couple of years now. She let's me know when it's time to do it again. She also goes and gets "colorers" in her hair. She has dark hair and we put light brown and red in. Because I allow her to do this, I believe, she is more inclined to take care of herself. She wants to be clean, and wear pretty clothes. And she wasn't allowed to get the Hannah Montana bra and panty set she so desperately tried to talk me into this year. Why don't you pick on the lazy Mom's who won't take the binky away from the 3 and 4 year olds?

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I use hair-removal strips on my 5-year old, on her eyebrows. If I don't, she'll have a unibrow and get teased

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I am 61 years old but when I was in fifth grade I developed in my breasts. I didn't want to go to school because I was the only girl that had boobs and needless to say the boys liked me. I HATED IT!!

However, my mother never dreamed of waxing any body hair I had, nor would she have dreamed of letting me have a breast reduction. She told me "that's life, learn to live with it or be the most depressed girl in school." If my daughter had hair on her body at a young age or developed as I did, I would never have thought of having her waxed or having a reduction. Kids today are too sensitive and are faced with a lot of "peer presure,' and thanks to parents today they can't live with it.

I'm not saying peer pressure is not a real thing, I'm saying parents need to back off and allow them to go through and face that peer pressure! You won't be around to protect your child forever so let he/she learn to be tough!

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I had the opposite problem as did my mother and grandmother. All our red hair is on our head. I was teased in both middle and high school since I was very athletic and our showers had no curtains. I felt like an outcast and would have given anything if I had hair on my body. I think it's important to teach your children to be happy with the body God gave them.

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Everything that I have read about early puberty says it is related to obesity.

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I like all these comments, about how you think children shouldn't have to change themselves to be accepted, but I wonder... how far do your feelings go?

I am 22 years old, and in January, I will be 23. I have had my period since I was 9 years old, and have grown hair on my legs, arms, armpits, and upper lip as a result.

I am 22 years old, and I don't believe I need to regularly shave off this hair. I don't like wearing sleeveless shirts or shorts/skirts. It is my belief that if you're not going to see it anyway, why should I bother? Most people tell me I'm disgusting because of it, but if you all believe one shouldn't have to change themselves at one age, do you agree that you shouldn't have to at another? How far does your tolerance go?

Forgive me for seeming to be rude, but I'm simply a curious observer. This information is all true, and I would simply like to see a response.

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I think that no child below 10 should even think about getting waxed. But I do think that at 13 you should beable to shave your legs!

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I was in the middle of the fourth grade when i started shaving but even before that i used hair remover stuff for my legs.I started shaving more then 2 years before my period.My mom never told me i could or couldn`t shave under my arms i just started when i started to get hair under my arms. By the 5th grade i was waxing my eyebrows olny because i wanted to wax them. I was told by people who saw the one or two cuts on my legs that i was too young to be shaving but i had hairy legs. I started using hair remover stuff in the 4th grade because i had hairy legs then boys in my class but then when i got older i learned that boys did not get hair on their legs till the were older.

I think the mother should not have waxed the child`s back. She is wayyy to young. If my child was being teased it is different, even if she was young and it bothered her i would use hair remover stuff i would never wax a kids back no matter how old. If it never bother the child i would leave it alone but if it did i would use hair remover stuff even if the child was young.

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I think that in America there is a kind of 'body' obsession.My Mum is of Eurasian descent and as such,is prone to alot of body hair. I inherited that.It was only when I went to an American school that I became concious of it. I was not allowed to shave until I was 14 and even then, only once a week. I survived and thrived!! The thing is to balance it out and not go to extremes.Yes, as women we all have our 'grooming' rituals (waxing,plucking,curling,blowdrying,etc...)but the idea is not to get to a point where it becomes an obsession. I will encourage my daughter to look her best and take care of herself not because of insecurity and fear of teasing, but because she's beautiful as GOD made her!!

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My beautiful 8-year old came to me two days ago asking if she could shave her legs. Why? Because she is not blind, and has noticed that her sisters do not have the dark, thick hair from ankles to upper thigh that she has. When I was a girl the kids in school called me a gorilla due to my leg hair; my mom let me start shaving at 10, thankfully. Nowhere in the original article did it say that the salon actually waxed that little girls' back. It simply stated the insistence of the child's mother. I actually asked my daughters' pediatrician about hair removal (Nair vs waxing vs shaving). His response was to make an appt for my daughter; he wants to do an ultrasound on her ovaries to rule out PCS and any chance of early puberty. Meanwhile, we are focusing on the fact that summer is nearly over and she will be wearing long pants soon.... Part of me feels that this constitutes denial, but I am hoping to put the whole hair removal thing off until next summer. My little sweetie only turned 8 in July. No one teases her about the hair. We home school, so we don't have to worry about that aspect of things. She simply wants to get rid of the hair. she's smart, articulate and very observant. And she wants to shave her legs. *I* don't even shave on a regular basis! But I am not as hairy as she is.... and if I were, I would shave regularly, and age would not be a consideration.

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