Much is made of how miserable it is for babies to cut teeth, especially the first and second premolars.
But children get their six year and twelve year molars, and teenagers get wisdom teeth, without any remark about pain.
What’s the difference?
I guess your experience must have been different, but I’m still cutting my bottom wisdom teeth at 44 (they get covered and back out again) and it’s anything but pleasant. When I was in middle/high school “those fucking wisdom teeth” was a relatively common reason for someone being “off his feed” (which usually translated into chewing carefully rather than gobbling any food available).
The difference is not that later teeth don’t hurt: it’s that a baby doesn’t understand why it hurts, that in their case teething pain is almost permanent (when it’s not one tooth coming out it’s another), that a baby cannot explain where is it hurting, and that there’s a lot of painkillers one can use at 7, 14 or 44 but not as a baby.
When my wisdom teeth get cranky, I know why that part of my mouth hurts, I know how long it’s going to last, I can use many different pain-coping mechanisms (mental, physical and medical - by physical I mean things like a chunk of ice, which yes, does work if the pain isn’t too bad). A baby? All a baby knows is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! and the parents can ask “oh honey what’s wrong?” all they want, the baby can only answer WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I was going to suggest wisdom teeth are a better parallel than adult teeth replacing your infant teeth. In the latter case the ‘hole’ is already there, a new tooth just pushes up and replaces the old one. But with your wisdom teeth have to cut through the gums on their way through (leaving aside all the myriad problems people can have with them).
It’s more than just the wisdom teeth that aren’t replacement for baby teeth. Adults have 32 teeth usually and a full set of baby teeth is only 20 so there are three additional teeth on each side in both the upper and lower jaw. The 12 year old molars can be quite painful as well for some people.
Also, a lot of the time when any infant is being a bit cranky with no known reason, people nod wisely and say “teeth”. Nobody actually checks in the ensuing weeks whether any teeth were forthcoming. And at certain points of an infant’s first year, there’s hardly any time when you can’t plausibly point to a tooth coming up or about to come up or maybe thinking of coming up.
Not to say that it’s never teeth, but speaking as someone whose children never showed any signs of dental-related distress, I think it’s vastly overplayed. After all, as Nava points out, we can’t ask 'em.
nods
Yep. I’ve got a Facebook friend who is convinced her 12 week old is teething because for about 3 days he slept through the night and now he isn’t anymore. :rolleyes: Now, it’s not *impossible *to cut a first tooth at 12 weeks (after all, some babies are born with teeth!), but it’s not very likely, either.
Teething gets blamed for everything.
But yes, teething can hurt whether you’re 8 months or 18 years. My wisdom teeth came in at the same time as my son cut his first tooth. That was a pretty miserable week in our house!
it’s impossible to measure the qualia of the infant (that is, their measured pain or otherwise discomfort) but i mean, babies are babies about practically everything.
how come i can say “BOO” to a kid and startle them without them bawling, but a baby falls to everloving pieces?
babies: pussies
you can also drop a toddler from a short distant and they may or may not cry, but
for sure end up uninjured.
babies: die.
(that’s right–i’m actively being unhelpful).
You’re in a GQ thread. Being actively unhelpful is the exact opposite of what should be happening in here.
it was kind of a joke, since, you know, the point is actually very relevant.
why a baby suffers more from one thing when a kid can tolerate it more. it’s because that’ what babies do; they cry or they don’t. they sort of lack nuance communication. they cry when they are wet while kids are wont to keep on playing on the playground, peepants and all.
they are babies. there’s virtually endless things a baby can’t tolerate than a 2 year old can. it’s part of being a baby.
An infant’s pain management system consists of 1: anything wrong cry 2: if that does not work cry louder. A child’s or adult’s would be different including self care, medication and or drug or alcohol use, choosing to bear it, and the like. So a infant you will hear more then a child or adult for the same thing. I would think a adult and a child would be more able not to aggravate that painful area as well.