Firstly let me apologise in advance for the number of tooth puns in this post. I can promise you they are acci-dental!!!!
My son is at that age where he is losing his baby teeth. One fell out a while ago but he lost it at school. He said it fell out first thing so by the time I picked him up from school he was over the initial shock of it all. But when the second tooth came out he was at home and this was slightly more traumatic. This particular tooth was hanging on by a thread so I suggested I pull it out so we didn’t lose this one, he tried himself but couldn’t do it so asked his sister to do it. It came out very easily for her, we had a few tears then he was fine. Until he tried to wobble it and realised that it had gone.
Child: “Can we stick it back in?”
Me: “It won’t stick back in”
Child: “We could glue it. That would work”
Me: “You can’t put glue in your mouth, it wouldn’t taste nice”
Child: “Sellotape? Sellotape would work”
Me: “No, sorry. It’s waiting for the tooth fairy now!”
And the questions rolled on and on….
“If I’ve lost two teeth how many teeth do I have left?”
“If I get £2 for each tooth how much will I get after all my teeth have come out?”
“If I get £3 for each tooth how much will I get?”
“When will I get my next wobbly tooth”
“How big will my big teeth grow”
I answered every single one of them – its a good job I got a GCSE in maths!! If only he had asked me his favourite question of what time is it I could have told him the time was tooth- hurty!!!
Interestingly all these questions about teeth were in relation to numbers, the size of the teeth, the number of teeth, the amount of money for the teeth. There was not one question about the tooth fairy, the magical fairy that flies round children’s house taking their teeth from under the pillow.
But the issue around his teeth that bothered him the most was what other people asked him. My son has a lovely smile, big bright and very wide so as he has been smiling with a gap in his teeth people have been noticing and they have asked the classic question that all grown ups (at least in my local area) ask children who have lost their teeth…..
“Ooooo have you been kissing the girls?”
Now I am not sure if this is a global thing but where we live this is the usual reaction to teeth falling out. I can remember as a small child myself after some of my teeth fell out grown ups would say to me…
“Ooo have you been kissing the boys?”
My daughter also got the same reaction. It’s one of them colloquialisms that spans generations after generation and nobody has absolutely any idea why it’s been said. It’s so widely accepted as a ‘normal’ reaction that I never thought anything of it until my son asked…
“Why do people say I have been kissing girls because my tooth has fallen out?”
I should have realized he wouldn’t understand it. To be honest I didn’t understand it either but I accepted it. My son couldn’t accept it. I explained it was just a phrase that people say. Usually people that are quite long in the tooth!!!
“Well it’s making me upset. I haven’t been kissing girls”
And he’s absotoothly (!!!) right. He barely kisses me as he hates it. If I do manage to get a kiss in he quite frequently rubs it off. But why would kissing make your teeth fall out?!? At this point I turned to my old friend Google and with the help of some team mates, we all had a break from the monotony of work to look for folklore and old wives tales and urban legends about teeth falling out. And we found some absolute gems.
- Drinking urine can make your teeth whiter
- Urine can be used to treat cavities
- Kissing a donkey can cure toothache
- Kissing can cause cavities….and there we have it….
And so that is it. That is the answer. Kissing can transfer bacteria to your mouth from the other person’s which can cause cavities and worst case scenario cause your teeth to fall out. Now my son is only 5, the only girls he kisses are me his mum, and his sister, rarely. And I don’t want to put him off kissing, and I certainly didn’t want to put him off kissing when he’s older, equally I don’t want him to start kissing people just to make his teeth fall out and so he can get all that money he has been making me add up, and so I stuck to my standard response “it’s just a joke/phrase”, which doesn’t sit well with me. It feels like I am fobbing him off. I much prefer telling him the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth!!
The Questions of My Child 
Leave a comment