When my daughter Isabella lost her first tooth, she was barely four years old. There was a lot of blood, and she was freaked out beyond anything that a lousy quarter could repair. And so, we set a silly and dangerous precedent: the tooth fairy left a present under her pillow. Many presents later, we realize how stupid we were; she developed a habit of losing teeth late at night, and while it is always possible to find some loose change in the couch, a present is not so easily pulled out of thin air.
Luckily, she’s changing her ways: these days, she tends to lose her teeth at school. It still happens way too often to my taste, but at least I have some respite from the frantic late night Target trips. She’s not squeamish about it either: she can leave home without warning signs, find a wiggly tooth during second period, and have it out by lunch time. No more patient waiting for that tooth to work its way out on its own; she yanks, pulls, and pushes until she has a beak full of blood and a prize in her hand. Voilà, another present comes her way.
The time that I lost my own baby teeth is about 500 years behind me, so this whole process gives me the creeps. Isabella is more concerned with the fact that she often misplaces those teeth. This is a normal side effect if you get it out early in the day, and you have the habit of forgetting everything that’s not screwed down. Also, Isa deems it necessary to communicate with the tooth fairy, a strange little thing she’s been doing for years.
The latest letter reads as follows:
“Dear Tooth Fairy,
I lost a tooth today. Really. I left it at school. So you can either trust me and give me a present anyway or you can wait until tomorrow and come back for it.
Love, Isabella.”
I tell her that the tooth fairy will believe her just fine, considering the gaping hole in her mouth, as well as the fact that she spent half an hour in the principal’s office trying to stem the bleeding. I wonder why we put so much energy in this whole tooth thing, but then I decide to be grateful society didn’t attach the same hoopla to hair, skin, and nails. Can you imagine how much fun that would be?
So why, you wonder, do we still do this; why do we not simply tell her it’s over, and stick a quarter under that pillow? For one, habits are hard to break; pretty soon she’ll be a teenager and we will have different problems. By then we will wonder why we ever fussed over a lost tooth and the accompanying ceremony. Second, I still don’t like the idea of putting money under her pillow. What if she grows up believing it’s okay to exchange body parts for money, and decides to sell a kidney? Or worse?
Comments
I enjoyed your article, and was glad to read right at the start that you realized how stupid this was ; ) Parents need to realize that they are the rule-makers, and if the rule changes, so be it. You could have said the first tooth, and only the first one, warranted a prize, and wiggled your way out of the following tooth-pulling behavior of your little one. Also, like Santa Claus, if she's in school already she's heard from numerous other kids that the whole thing is being done by her parents, and she's just yanking out the teeth as long as you'll keep going along with it. However, I know some folks who have a little container on the nightstand that is the "fairy box" and the tooth goes in at bedtime, with the change or buck in it by morning, no pillow involved anymore.
I enjoyed this story very much! Thanks for sharing.
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