Purple Hair & Towels: A Teen's Defiant Streak

Q. My 14-year-old daughter does well in school and has a good, healthy social life , but she's going through quite a hair-dyeing phase.

At first we let her friend apply semi-permanent purple dye, but there were mishaps, so we told our daughter that she couldn't do this again without adult supervision.

Weeks later, she came in with purple hair and smudges all over her neck and face and instead of scolding her for dyeing it by herself, we simply said, "We thought that we could trust you to do this with an adult."

My husband applied the dye the next time , but she didn't like the results and she stopped dyeing it -- until one night, when she got bored. We found out when she woke us up at 2 a.m. to help her get the dye off her skin, but it wasn't just her face that was covered with dye. The tub and wall tiles looked like they were painted with purple Kool-Aid , and even the towels were a wreck. I told her she would have to help pay for new ones, but that I wouldn't buy any towels until she got over this hair-dyeing phase.

While I fumed, my husband scrubbed the tub and tiles and joked with her about the mess, so I guess she didn't think her offense was so serious. Not 72 hours later, she bought -- and applied -- a package of permanent blue-black dye without any supervision at all.

My husband scrubbed the tiles again , and I grounded her for three weeks, except for one special event. The grounding will occur during spring break, however, and she is asking for more exceptions. Part of me thinks, "Good, this will make her feel it more," but part of me wonders if she will learn anything at all. What would be a fair yet effective correction?

A.Most 14-year-olds can't think in abstractions yet, and if they can't think in abstractions, they aren't likely to think of consequences.

Until your daughter can do that, she should pay the price for her mistake -- even during spring break.

It isn't a bad idea to ground a child for breaking the rules, but your daughter probably wouldn't have broken them the second time if she had had to clean up the mess the first time -- even at 2 a.m. If you had followed that scenario, you and your husband would have kept your temper and your jokes to yourself while one of you stayed up to see that she scrubbed the tub and the tiles as clean as they were before. And if she didn't do a good job, you would have told her, briefly and firmly, to do it again, and, if necessary, to do it a third and even a fourth time, no matter how late it was.

Quiet, businesslike oversight may be more of a punishment for you and your husband than for your daughter -- especially in the middle of the night -- but concrete thinkers often need concrete corrections to remember the rules of the house.

If you are going to cut down on her punishment, it would be better to ground her for two weeks, instead of three, rather than make one exception after another to suit her social schedule. Your daughter can use the time to babysit or walk dogs, so she can earn enough to pay for some of those new towels, but buy them as soon as she hands you the cash, instead of waiting for the end of her hair-dyeing phase. It should be enough to tell her that she will have to pay the entire cost of another set of towels if she ever gets dye on even one of the new ones, just as she will have to scrub the tiles and the tub all by herself if she ever makes such a mess in the bathroom again.

This kind of discipline may seem harsh to you, but if you want your child to be a responsible person, she must start paying her own consequences. Your child is a member of the family team, not a helpless dependent. Despite her good and healthy social life, and despite the fact that she is doing well in school, she also needs to feel needed at home.

If you teach your daughter how to bake a small pork tenderloin and a few potatoes in the oven and how to microwave broccoli and beets, you can -- and should -- count on her to make dinner for the family once a week, homework or not. A busy child is never bored -- at least not bored enough to dye her hair at 2 in the morning.

Questions? Send them toadvice@margueritekelly.comor to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.