My daughter lost two of her baby teeth last night at my in-law’s. My MIL started to tell me how I should find a place to store them where I wouldn’t get them mixed up with my other kids’ teeth. :dubious:
See, she kept both of her kids’ teeth in her jewelry box, and they got mixed up so she doesn’t know whose are whose. :dubious:
I really didn’t want to get into it, but fortunately my wife was there. She says, among other things, “Do you ever pull out our teeth and look at them?”
MIL seemed surprised that we were just going to throw them out, because surely the kids would want their baby teeth at some point. How crazy is she? Do any of you have your baby teeth stashed away somewhere?
I have my kids’ baby teeth, however my daughter has most of her own, as she requested from the tooth fairy she get to keep them. I have the notes instead!
Into early adulthood at least, one of my cousins still had a jar with his baby teeth in it, and a toe nail he’d lost at some point. I was offered a sniff of the jar of foulness but I declined. I couldn’t imagine any reason to hold on to such artifacts. It’s creepy and it’s kooky.
My mom never kept our teeth, and we never did the tooth fairy thing either. I do remember that one of my teeth came out while I was brushing and it went down the drain…
We didn’t keep our daughter’s teeth either, tho we did do the tooth fairy for her. Until the day she gave us “The Ultimate Test” (her words.) She lost a tooth and put it under her pillow without telling us, so she didn’t get anything for it. We pointed out that since she knew it was us, there would be no more money. She didn’t think it out that far ahead!
I’m going to remember this. My daughter said she’d know if the tooth fairy was real if she left treats that we already had in the house. I’m not sure how long the charade will last. My wife wrote a note and was worried that she’d recognize her handwriting. I had to point out that the tooth fairy is, in fact, not real, and there’s really no harm in our daughter figuring that out. I’m not willing to go full Santa on this one.
In general, my mother is a great mom, but there’s some bad habits she never got past. One of those was giving us bottles for too long, and putting juice in the bottle. This caused both us kids to have our front teeth get bottle rot and have to be removed. You’d think she would have learned in the 10 years between children, but I guess not.
Anyway, she kept the rotted teeth in a pill bottle in the cabinet with all the spices while I was growing up. I remember one of mine was like a tiny bracelet bead, round with a hole in the middle.
I kept my kids’ teeth in the back of my jewelry box and in a couple of other scattered places until I was going through my closets earlier this year in a decluttering kick and asked myself seriously what the hell I thought I was doing. Away into the trash they went, with no more remorse than a shake of the head at the idea of holding onto them so long.
I think my mom still has ours in a little box in her jewelry box.
The Tooth Fairy at our house was pretty sucky, and when she did remember to put money out, half the time the Kiddo had to be told to check for it. He didn’t seem to care that much. Eventually, we all just abandoned the idea. One day he came home from school with a missing tooth and I asked him where it was and he was like, “I threw it out. What was I doing to do with it?”
We were cleaning out his room this summer, preparing to redecorate and I found several molars on his window sill. I just told him he needed to make sure he let us know when he lost one, but at 14, I don’t think he’s going to lose many more.
So no, I don’t have any of the Kiddo’s teeth stashed anywhere.
I could have written this post, except the ones I kept were all in my jewelry box. In the ongoing sorting and clearing that started because we were going to move, I finally got rid of three kids’ worth of baby teeth. I’m getting to a point where it’s easier to let go of some things.
Finding our baby teeth in my mom’s jewelry box was part of what confirmed my thoughts about the tooth fairy being Mom and Dad, the other part being that I checked under my pillow one morning, found the tooth still there, and then checked again after Mom came in and gave me an uncharacteristic morning hug. Surprise! A quarter!.
I have my kid’s teeth, because my mom has mine. I never thought about why. We each have a little cardboard jewelry box with the baby teeth. She did tell me recently that she doesn’t really have a box of teeth anymore, she has a box of tooth fragments, and may even have tossed it then. But the boxes aren’t in our way. I’ll throw mine out when I move from this apartment and get rid of my furniture, I suspect.
A good friend of mine is from a large family. Her mom participated in a 50 year study regarding family health. For some reason saving the baby teeth was part of that study. BUT, since she was a mom of seven with a full time job she wasn’t paying hawklike attention and if any of the kids needed a quarter they’d sneak into mom’s drawer, grab a tooth, tell her they’d lost a tooth and wait for the tooth fairy.
My kid lost one of his teeth when I had some thing going on and much to my shame I fell asleep before he was fast asleep. In the morning he was a combination of crestfallen and indignant.
Like some of you, I recently decluttered my children’s teeth… I’m not even sure why I kept them in the first place.
I popped in to say that our house was near the end of the tooth fairy’s route, so there were a few times that the tooth fairy was so busy that the toothless child was up and about before she was able to make the exchange…
My son lost a tooth in school during 1st grade, and his teacher saved it and sent it home with him in an envelope. I thought that was a bit odd (and I have no idea if I still have the envelope), but I can imagine some irate mother hollering at a teacher, “What do you mean you threw it away?!??”
Yes, I have both my children’s baby teeth and they are separated. (The kids are 11 years apart so it wasn’t a big deal to keep them straight). I have no idea if my mother has mine.
