Have you noticed how kids copy adults? Do they repeat their words, intonations, actions? Young fashionistas want to wear heels, paint their lips, and get their nails done. Trying on their mother's images, girls feel like princesses. Don’t forbid them to do this, remember yourself as a child.
The main thing is to choose safe means and methods. When it comes to manicure, many questions immediately arise. Can children paint their nails? Which polish should I choose? At what age is it allowed to apply gel polish and do extensions?
General recommendations
Manicure and pedicure are a set of cosmetic procedures for the care of nails, skin of hands and feet. It includes massage, baths, polishing, decoration, nail plate extension.
Until the age of 9–10 years, pediatricians and manicurists advise limiting yourself to regular hygienic treatment: shortening the length of the nail plate, cleaning from dirt, removing burrs. This will be enough for boys. But girls have a different opinion. At the age of 4–5 years, they already come to their mothers and demand to paint their nails. And at 11-12 years old, children want gel polish on their nails for a long-lasting manicure. What should parents do?
Teach your child to regularly care for their nails and treat them with care and precision. Until the age of 14–16 years, the nail plate is still developing. It is thinner and softer than that of adults. Any aggressive impact can cause its deformation, disruption of structure, delamination, and fragility.
When getting a children's manicure, you cannot:
- cut the cuticle;
- use adult varnishes;
- apply a decorative coating without preliminary hygienic treatment, a safe choice for children up to 14–15 years old is a dry European manicure;
- grind, polish the surface of the nail plate;
- leave a large length (no more than 3 mm of free edge is allowed), babies are very active and careless. Long nails will get in the way when playing or changing clothes, clinging, bending, breaking off;
- make a pointed shape. Only round or square with rounded corners are suitable.
Stages of performing unedged children's manicure.
Before starting a manicure, it is necessary to treat the child’s hands with a disinfectant and dry them naturally.
Disinfection should never be neglected, because the child’s immune system is still fragile and the risk of getting an infectious infection or fungal infection without proper safety net is very high. You need to carefully process the free edge of the nail plate. Moreover, only with files with an abrasiveness of 240-360 grit to prevent delamination and the formation of cracks. However, at least 1 mm of length must be left. These nail files from the brands CND, EzFlow, and Irisk are perfect for young fingers.
Next, we proceed to processing the cuticle. The ideal option is Cuticle Eraser (C-Therapy) cuticle remover cream from the CND brand. After applying it, very carefully push back the cuticle with an orange stick and remove burrs (cut them with round scissors).
You should also approach the choice of coating responsibly and, first of all, save the young fashionista from the bad habit of biting her nails. The special anti-gnaw coating EL Corazon will help with this. Thanks to it, nail designs for teenagers made with gentle varnishes created using big3free or big4free technology (i.e., not containing harmful substances) will last longer. For children's manicures, bio-care varnishes from the EL Corazon brand, varnishes from the Milv brand, or varnishes from the famous China Glaze brand are ideal.
Getting a children's manicure right means not forgetting about such an important finishing touch as applying care oil to the finished manicure to take care of delicate skin and nails. Products from MILV, EZ Flow, El Corazon, Famous Names or IRISK brands will help you here. When creating children's nail polishes, remember that caring for children's nails for hygiene purposes should be systematic and competent.
Lucky
A safe coating for a child’s nails is a children’s varnish that:
- is made on a water basis;
- washes off with warm water and soap, and not with acetone and other chemical solvents;
- does not contain or contains a minimum of harmful components (formaldehyde, toluene, dibutyl phthalate) that can cause irritation or allergies.
Children's polishes are produced in plastic tubes with a dispenser or in the form of a sippy bottle. You can buy sets of nail polishes for children in different colors along with stickers, glitter, and decals.
When are children allowed to paint their nails? The packaging for the varnish usually indicates the age at which it is allowed to be used. When buying, it is important for mom to pay attention to this.
Baby polish is considered safe. With its help, young ladies can do a manicure themselves, but under the supervision of their mother, turning the process into a game. The coating helps to cope with the habit of biting nails, which affects up to 30% of children under 10 years of age and up to 40% of adolescents from 12 to 18 years of age. In medicine, this disorder is called onychophagia.
Girls of high school age can use adult varnishes with a gentle composition, but they should not often get carried away with them. Before using them, it is recommended to apply a protective medicinal coating as the first layer. To remove such varnish, you need products without acetone.
What manicure is suitable for a teenager
When choosing a nail design for a young girl, you should follow several rules. Among the most popular solutions are plain coatings, nude, French, ombre. Such designs will be appropriate both in the atmosphere of a school prom and at a New Year's party. The manicure can be complemented with sparkles, rhinestones, and designs in the appropriate theme. Small stickers that are applied under the top help to quickly and easily add zest to the coating. If we are talking about everyday manicure for a high school student or student, you should not choose bright and catchy colors. Such a covering would be appropriate at a celebration or when visiting a club, but not at school. When going to prom, choose a nail design that will match the color and cut of the dress, the type of jewelry and other elements of the image.
The trend among young ladies is reverse French. In this case, not a line is drawn along the free edge of the nail, but a hole at its base. It can be decorated with rhinestones, round sparkles or other decor.
Summer manicure for a teenager can be anything. Among the fashion trends are designs with juicy fruits, watermelon slices, and flowers. And on the eve of the New Year, we recommend considering winter-themed solutions - with bright balls, green pine needles, imitation serpentine, fireworks, snowflakes. Choose according to your taste, but don’t be overzealous: a “heavy” manicure on young hands will not look harmonious.
You will also need the following components to create a manicure, such as: Bases and Tops and, to diversify the color palette, Colored gel polishes.
Fake nails
False nail plates are available not only for adults, but also for children. They stick easily to your nails and can be easily removed. Due to the water-based glue, to remove them, just put your hands in a bath of warm water for 10 minutes. You can buy false nails for children in toy stores, in the children's departments of adult cosmetic stores.
Despite the safety of such decor, you should not leave them for a long time and use them frequently. Too thin, sensitive nail plates will experience stress, which can cause complications.
Children's false nails are suitable for short-term use. For example, for a matinee, a visit, a children's party. When you give your children false nails, don’t forget to tell them to be careful to avoid injury. Long nails are unsafe. In addition, with them the little girl’s hand looks unnatural and inharmonious.
Manicure sets for teenagers from 12 to 15 years old
Hot manicure
In order to make a beautiful and safe manicure for a 13-year-old girl, the master or other person who applies it must have certain tools and consumables in his arsenal. So, this list of necessary things in a children's manicure set is given below:
- First of all, it is a disinfectant, because when working with children’s nails, the infection can get under the skin much faster, since the immune system is still too weak.
- Small nail scissors or several similar tools, strictly with rounded ends so as not to damage delicate skin.
- When working with teenagers, be sure to have oil, cream or lotion with you to treat the skin with a softening composition.
- The most effective and safest way to care for the cuticle, which is an integral part of manicure for 14 years, is considered to be the use of a special wooden stick, which in the arsenal of a young fashionista should be of several sizes, so that she can work with any hangnails. In addition, if a girl wants a master to make a beautiful design on her nail with acrylic composition, then she can’t do without a small pointed stick.
- Of course, the main ingredient for any girl will be a set of nail polishes in all the colors of the rainbow. However, here you should choose a composition without an oxidizing agent so that the children's nail is not etched under the influence of harmful chemicals. So, it is best to choose a high-quality acrylic coating and under no circumstances treat children’s nails with acetone.
- For glamorous teenagers who want to stand out with their manicure, as a rule, various sparkles, rhinestones, and miniature stencils are used to apply a more expressive and clear design.
- Of course, in some cases you may need small polymer nails to do extensions, but this procedure is not very common among teenagers.
Important! When working with children's nails, you need to monitor the serviceability of the instrument and its sterility, and also carefully select only those ingredients and consumables that have not expired. All expired, damaged and dirty things can greatly harm a teenager.
Gel polish
Gel polish is the most popular coating among women. His beauty and durability attract the attention of teenagers. From the age of 11 to 12, after watching beautiful photos of gel polish on their nails, children wonder when they will be allowed to have it done?
The opinion of experts on this matter is clear. Children can paint their nails with gel polish no earlier than 16 years of age, when puberty ends, hormonal levels stabilize, and the nail plate is finally formed.
The danger of gel polish is that its components partially change the structure of a child’s delicate nail plate. This is fraught with cracking, deformation, and detachment. It can also cause allergic reactions.
To convince her daughter about gel polish, her mother needs to tell her about its shortcomings and possible complications. As an argument, say that children's nails grow faster than adults'. This means that the effect will not be so long-lasting. In terms of time, it will be comparable to three paintings with high-quality varnish. And it will be three manicures with different designs, colors, and not the same one for three weeks. In addition, the lower growing edge will not be visible.
Sometimes gel polish is used for medicinal purposes to correct abnormal growth of the nail plate and combat onychophagia. In this case, the coating is applied to the child for a month, and as it grows, it is cut off.
Top manicure
Original manicure for school in French style
Bright manicure for summer holidays
"Cat" design
Gorgeous cartoon themed design
Unusual geometric pattern combined with a continuous coating
Lunar manicure
Shellac in soft colors
Building up
At what age can children get nail extensions? For teenagers, extensions are even more prohibited than gel polish. Mothers know this, so they make concessions to their daughters and agree to gel polish as a safer alternative to extensions. Choose the lesser of two evils.
Why aren't nail extensions done for children?
- Until the age of 14–16 years, nails are not yet fully formed. They are quite soft and flexible, so the modeled elongated nail plate will not hold well.
- The coating for extensions is applied in a thick layer, putting pressure on the native nail.
- When applying extensions, the smooth surface of the nail plate is filed down and made rough. This is necessary for better adhesion of the nail to the polymer material. This mechanical impact causes serious harm.
- First of all, you need to be able to wear long nails. You will have to forget about ball games and sudden movements. Even writing with a pen at school is difficult with them.
- If moved carelessly, the extended nail plate can peel off along with part of the keratin of the native nail, undermine it, disrupt contact with the nail bed, and lead to wounds and bruises.
The best way to grow your child’s nails is to take care of their health, then they will be strong and quickly grow to the desired length. If your nails grow slowly, peel, or break off, consult a doctor. Perhaps the body simply does not have enough vitamins or minerals.
The most popular and easy manicure for girls 12 years old
Mom can allow the girl to play around a little during the holidays. Why not give your daughter a fun, bright manicure. The girl can try to make easy drawings on her own. It’s easier to make a design with your right hand, but it’s more difficult to draw with your left hand... You’ll have to ask your mom for help. But after training, the girl will also skillfully perform drawings with her left hand.
What simple designs should you start with to understand the art of nail art?
- The easiest way to draw funny polka dots It's both simple and beautiful. You can place the dots in a checkerboard pattern or diagonally.
- Pink hearts can be made from two drops by carefully connecting them with a toothpick in the desired direction.
- Cute bows - an attribute of childhood - are very easy to draw. You can decorate all the records with them or just the ring finger.
- Small flowers are a more complex option. You need to start with daisies or stylized flowers with five petals.
- Funny faces will cheer up both the girl and her friends. Only real artists can depict cartoon characters on their nails.
There are many more interesting options: butterflies, animal prints, cats, cakes and candies. Only to create such a design you need an authoritative and skillful older assistant.
