On Friday it was time for Liam's trip to the dentist, and this time Mallory tagged along. Our dentist does not officially schedule appointments with kids until they are 4. (I'm not sure what the average starting age is out there. Is this early or late?) But at 3, they are encouraged to tag along with someone else so they can scope the place out. So this seemed like a good opportunity to get Mallory acquainted with the place.
She was good with the idea of going in as long as she didn't have to have her teeth cleaned. This made me laugh, since she has no idea what a cleaning entails. (And Liam's cleaning frankly only took about two minutes. It's not like it's some huge ordeal!) I told her all the dentist would do is count her teeth, and she seemed OK with that until we got to the office. Once we were there though, she asked me with some trepidation if the dentist is a man or a woman, and when I told her it was a man she was a bit upset by that. But you know what? Thank goodness for TVs on the ceiling in dentists' offices. That was all she needed to distract her and perk her right back up again. (That's her watching it behind Liam's head up top.)
She did finally open up and let the dentist count her teeth when her turn came. As we suspected, she has 19 - one fewer than most kids her age, on account of her funny fused-together front tooth. And the dentist thinks her permanent teeth will be normal. In exchange for allowing him to count her teeth, the dentist let her 'go shopping' in his prize jar and gave her a free toothbrush. She came home thinking that trips to the dentist are actually a lot of fun, and I hope the next time she has to go she will remember these things and acutally look forward to it.
On Friday it was time for Liam's trip to the dentist, and this time Mallory tagged along. Our dentist does not officially schedule appointments with kids until they are 4. (I'm not sure what the average starting age is out there. Is this early or late?) But at 3, they are encouraged to tag along with someone else so they can scope the place out. So this seemed like a good opportunity to get Mallory acquainted with the place.
She was good with the idea of going in as long as she didn't have to have her teeth cleaned. This made me laugh, since she has no idea what a cleaning entails. (And Liam's cleaning frankly only took about two minutes. It's not like it's some huge ordeal!) I told her all the dentist would do is count her teeth, and she seemed OK with that until we got to the office. Once we were there though, she asked me with some trepidation if the dentist is a man or a woman, and when I told her it was a man she was a bit upset by that. But you know what? Thank goodness for TVs on the ceiling in dentists' offices. That was all she needed to distract her and perk her right back up again. (That's her watching it behind Liam's head up top.)
She did finally open up and let the dentist count her teeth when her turn came. As we suspected, she has 19 - one fewer than most kids her age, on account of her funny fused-together front tooth. And the dentist thinks her permanent teeth will be normal. In exchange for allowing him to count her teeth, the dentist let her 'go shopping' in his prize jar and gave her a free toothbrush. She came home thinking that trips to the dentist are actually a lot of fun, and I hope the next time she has to go she will remember these things and acutally look forward to it.
2 comments:
What fused together teeth? Her teeth look perfectly normal to me.
You know the four teeth you have across the top front, and the four teeth across the bottom? She only has three on the bottom. The two on the left are normal, and the one on the right is the size of two regular teeth, with a deep fissure in it. It's like she has two regular teeth that are fused together.
You just don't notice it because she's so stinkin' cute in every other way. :)
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