Teeth have started wobbling in Junior Brit’s mouth, and we are wondering how much the tooth fairy pays these days.
How many countries have the tooth fairy? And do any other countries or cultures have rituals associated with the loss of milk teeth?
In Japan some areas have a tradition that a bottom tooth is taken outside and thrown up as high as the kid can chuck it, to encourage the bottom tooth to grow up straight and strong, and a top tooth is taken upstairs and chucked down hard to ensure straight growth!
Junior Brit’s parents have arranged with the tooth fairy for the tooth to be left under the pillow with the money for completion of this ritual!
This is by no means an attempt at accuracy, but I believe a good rule of thumb is to multiply whatever you got for your teeth as a kid by a factor of 5 for each ten years you are older than the kid.
Inflation applies.
Things that were 10c when I was a kid are at least $1 these days.
I think I got either a dime or a quarter for mine, so I’d expect anywhere from a dollar to controlling interest in some web-based business.
I’m a camp counselor right now, and one girl in my group lost a tooth about a week ago. She was expecting 5 dollars, and was disappointed when she only got three.
I think that it should be done on a sliding scale. Younger kids tend to have less need to have personal spending money. So it probably should start low (maybe 50 cents to a dollar) and maybe get up as high as 5 by the last tooth.
Once my little one finally twigged to the whole tooth fairy scam, she insisted on re-negotiating the terms. She’s a hard-bitten capitalist who will not take no for an answer, so we finally agreed to 1 dollar per tooth for every year of age. She had lost most of her baby teeth by this time (she was 6), so I let it slide. And slide. And slide. For the next 4 years, not a single tooth fell out until she turned 11, at which time her dentist decided that they had best be pulled in the interest of her permanent ones, so in one fell swoop, I had to pony up for 6 teeth at US$11 a pop.
Kids here in Japan don’t get any money for teeth falling out - the tooth fairy doesn’t call here. Kid (6, nearly 7) has more than once bemoaned his fate of having a foreigner for a mother. I have enjoyed pointing out that thanks to his mixed blood, in this case he wins over his little friends!
Interesting too that Brit Jr is losing his teeth much later than his friends, he is almost the last in his class to start. The girls seemed to start losing teeth anywhere from five years onwards
Geez. I got 25c (Canadian), every time. And I was happy!
('course, I chipped one of the replacements last week. That cost 75$. Just, ya know, in case it matters.
It’s a dollar in our household, but that’s mainly because the Tooth Fairy doesn’t feel like dealing with handfuls of change at midnight when she’s cranky and just wants to go to bed. She very nearly made a fatal mistake early on, when she was young and enthusiastic about her job, by considering instituting the tradition of giving away a dollar coin for each tooth. Luckily, she came to her senses when she realized that she is not of the character to have dollar coins ready to hand and that she would one night end up searching twenty-four-hour convenience stores for the damn things.
So, yeah, it’s a dollar here. When the Tooth Fairy manages to remember.
Five dollars for the first tooth (he’s almost seven and missed out on all the “tooth clubs” in school.) I did tell him that the first tooth is special and that the fairy won’t bring as much next time. She’ll bring a dollar. He told me that there were boy tooth fairies and girl tooth fairies and that they were very very small and very very quick.
In Germany I think it’s something like a mouse eats the tooth and I’ve seen little wooden mouse shaped boxes for the purpose of holding the tooth. I’m not sure about money or if the tooth gets taken away or what?
The “tooth fairy” used to give me a silver dollar each time, then my parents would offer to hold said silver dollar for “safe-keeping”. Same with my 3 siblings. SO by my calculations there should be a huge stockpile of silver dollars waiting for us to claim.
I think in reality my parents might have as many as 3 silver dollars in total.
I got a quarter, they get a quarter. Some of their friends get more, but unfortunately we live in the cheap tooth fairy’s district. (Hey, they don’t appreciate the value of money anyway. If it’s a shiny quarter, they’re happy!)
I think I got fifty cents for each tooth, back in the day.
I was amazed when, a few years ago, I was talking to a little girl I worked with and she told me that she got ten dollars per tooth.
I was ready to get the pliers out and go to work.
I used to get 75 cents a tooth except for the time when I had to get 4 teeth pulled at once at the dentist. I got $5 for all four…working out to $1.25 per tooth as I gleefully pointed out to my mother at the time.
The siblings, who are not terribly far away from tooth fairy visits themselves, got the same.
$5 in the rich part of town, $1 everywhere else. Of course, some kids get what is called their “Heart’s Desire.” That means the little varmints get to pick a toy.
$3-$5 for the first tooth, $1 for all ones after that (except the two front teeth, worth $5). Don’t forget the sparkly fairy dust! A thread on this subject was up a few weeks ago, and a Doper (apologize for not remembering who) suggested little sparkly footprints leading up to/away from their bed.
