Pliers and Rope

My son has a tooth that needs to fall out.   It’s the right front tooth on his upper jaw.   It’s one of the two front and center teeth you see when you smile.   And his tooth is crooked.   The permanent tooth has been pushing downwards from his jaw for some time, but as it did so for some reason it started to push the baby tooth to the side instead of uniformly downwards.  

Maybe his baby tooth didn’t resorb evenly on both sides or maybe the baby or permanent teeth are in just the right position to cause his tooth to veer off to one side.   I started noticing it because the spacing between two of his teeth looked larger.   Then it got larger still.   Now the tooth is not only almost overlapping the other front tooth, it’s angled down at a kilt that makes my son look snaggle-toothed.

The tooth itself must be bothering my son because he decided last night that he, “wanted to tie a rope around his tooth and then to a doorknob so we can pull it out”.   We talked about the whole “rope” part of that idea and the difficulty from a relative size perspective.   I suggested dental floss and we tried for the next ten minutes to get dental floss securely tied around my son’s tooth.  

He was very helpful.   I think he wanted this tooth out (he’s only lost two others at this point).   As it turns out, teeth are slippery—especially teeth that taper down like this tooth did.  But not to worry, my son had a second idea—pliers.  

That’s right, he wanted to see if he could pull out his tooth with pliers.   Sure, why not, I thought?   My daughter wanted to help get the pliers, knowing where my jewelers pliers were in the craft room. She practically shoved me out of the way to get there first she wanted to help so much.

I got several types and she carefully brought them downstairs, holding them pointed downwards in her hand and telling me she learned how to walk safely with sharp objects from school when I asked. After giving them over to my son, she went off to get ready for bed and I watched to see if my son was really up for the job of ripping a tooth out with pliers.

Did I mention teeth are slippery?   He tried.  I tried.   We could get the tooth and we could wiggle it some.   I was even able to get the tooth from the sides because it was sticking out so much and wiggle it in a perpendicular direction.   But the tooth wasn’t coming out.   Or at least not without some violent action taken and I didn’t want tooth number three lost to be a memory by which all other teeth would be judged—meaning in fear, blood and/or pain.    So we let it lie.

Today, one day later the tooth is still in place.   He has another tooth on the lower half of his mouth that’s getting more “wiggly” and might escape his mouth first.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son sometimes streaks his pants.   He’s focused on working or playing and doesn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom.   He has to clean his underwear when this happens.  Sunday he had indeed streaked his pants.   I must have said something along the lines of it being a lot.   My son was absolutely incensed.   When you read this next imagine my very indignant son as he said, “that’s a tiny bit!  What’s wrong with you?  Do you have bad vision?  It is not that big.  I’m not cleaning them—I’m tired.”  (He cleaned them.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her six-year-old wellness check today.   All is well other than a little eczema she has on and off.   No allergies, no other problems to speak of aside from the vision.   One thing that was interesting was the nurse asking if she could do a vision test.   We don’t really know what my daughter can see.   I suggested she do the test where she looked into the machine because I didn’t think she could see the one where she stood down the hall and read the chart.   She put her eyes up to the machine and looked and I watched as she moved her face and eyes around to try and see something.   She could tell something was there but couldn’t see what it was.   So down the hall we went.   From ten feet away my daughter could see there was a lighter area (chart) against the door but not what was on it.   The nurse was going to abandon the test but at this point I had a daughter who was willing to try (a lot of the time she isn’t).    I brought her forward until she could see the biggest letter on the chart.   The one that’s 20/400 from ten feet away.   My daughter could read the letter at one foot away.   But she could see some of the smaller things lower down on the chart at that distance too.   She has no ability to focus because she has no natural lenses but she does well within the confines of that limitation.