I have crossed many thresholds in my parenting journey thus far: sleeping through the night, teething, potty training, weaning off bottles, ear piercing, finishing daycare and preschool (2 more payments, or 4 more weeks, to go and then we’re done!)…lots of accomplishments in her 5 1/2 years. But this weekend we crossed one more. And it is by far the one I’ve been dreading the most.
My daughter has her first loose tooth.
Loose teeth are disgusting. They completely and totally gross me out. I can’t even think about one without shuddering (much like I cannot think about lice or the chicken pox without having severe bouts of itching). In fact, it is the one thing I’ve told my husband I cannot handle. Blood, vomit, diarrhea, broken bones, bee stings, splinters…I can handle all of that. But a loose tooth sends me running for the hills (or underneath my desk. Whichever is closer). So when I realized my daughter’s tooth was loose, I got freaked out.
And then I thought of the tooth fairy. Which freaked me out even more.
When I was a kid (back in the 80s), I’m fairly certain I got about $1 for my first lost tooth and about a quarter for every tooth after that. My parents were cute about it at first. They did the whole tooth fairy thing and went out of their way to make me think that she was sneaky enough to come into my room and leave money under my pillow. I believed it, too, until I was about 7 and they would just fork over the money after the tooth was out. I was thrilled with that quarter and raced to my room to put it in my “piggy” bank (ah, to be 7 again. Or need quarters for laundry day). But if I’m to understand it correctly, the tooth fairy has increased her prices dramatically. And I’m not sure why.
I don’t think teeth are more valuable now than they were 30 years ago. So I’ve been trying to speculate on why, from what I understand, the going rate for a tooth is around $5 a tooth yes, $5 a tooth. I’m as shocked as you are. Unless you have kids. Then maybe you’re not so shocked). Maybe the tooth fairy’s expenses have gone up and she’s just passing that along to the rest of us. Maybe she feels that she needs a raise because, unlike Santa who works one night a year, she has to work every day, dammit, travelling all over the world and having to remember the exchange rates and not leave a Canadian coin under an American child’s pillow; that’s a shit ton of work. Maybe she’s sick of people thinking she’s not real and she’s just extorting us as payback. I don’t know. What I do know is that the price of teeth is out of control.
My husband and I haven’t discussed how we’re going to handle payment for the lost teeth (which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. We’re giving her money for losing a tooth. I would like to get money for losing something. How about the next time I lose my keys, I make my husband give me $3? Do you think he’d go for that?). We do know that losing the whole set is going to put us back $100. In the grand scheme of things, $100 isn’t a great deal of money since she won’t lose all of her teeth at once but still–$5 a tooth seems a bit steep. I’m thinking we do an inflated version of what my parents did. $5 for the first tooth and $1 or $2 for every other tooth.
Another option is to agree to pay her $5 per tooth and then have a “tooth fund”. Since we know they’re going to fall out and she has 20 of them, we know we’re going to have to pay $100. Also, we know that we have some time before the first one falls out, which gives us time to save the money. I feel kind of ridiculous having a savings account for teeth but I don’t want her to think the tooth fairy is stiffing her. That would be unfair.
I feel ridiculous that I’m agonizing over her losing her teeth but it’s a pretty big deal. The tooth fairy is almost a rite of passage; every kid deserves to have a visit, including my daughter. I just don’t want to be extorted by a make-believe fairy responsible for making parents pay, literally, for the most disgusting part of raising a child.
Parents of kids who’ve lost teeth, how much did you pay? Any suggestions on how we should handle this?
Well, I never received any cash for teeth when I was little! I did freak out about them though, such a yucky feeling. Eck!
Jayden got $1 for every tooth. Then, since I didn’t realize that he would remember everything I ever told him, he got $5 for any teeth with fillings or caps. He had to have dental surgery at 4 because of some kind of fluoride deficiency that I still don’t understand, and to make him less nervous I told him that the Tooth Fairy paid five bucks for silver teeth. We never talked about it again, then suddenly at age 7, he announces, “One of my silver teeth in the back is loose! That means I get $5 from the Tooth Fairy, doesn’t it?” Shit. Yeah. I think $1 is more than fair, personally. And the Tooth Fairy didn’t give him anything if he lost the tooth and/or let one of the dogs eat it. Yes, both of those things have happened.
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There is no way my kids are getting $5 a tooth. They will be lucky to get $1.
My son gets a dollar per tooth. He hasn’t quite figured out why his classmate gets $5, but he has decided she must pay more in richer neighborhoods.
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I hate loose teeth, and I am a first grade teacher… It freaks me out when my students want to show me their loose teeth. It’s even worse when they lose it in my classroom.
When I was younger I got $5 for my first lost tooth and $1 for every other tooth. I have heard most students get about a dollar per tooth. That seems to be the going rate around our area.
My kids get $5 a tooth too. Shocking but true. I don’t even know how we came up with that amount. The trick is not figuring out the amount (do what you feel is right for you and your family) but it’s remembering to make the swap! We have the kids put their tooth in a small zip loc bag under their pillow. It makes finding the tooth and making the swap easier. It also gets rid of the ick factor of touching the tooth 😉
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I think the prices have gone up as the prices for dentistry have gone up too. Teeth are expensive!
I got $1 a tooth for every tooth in the 90’s. $5 sounds like a lot of money to me.
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Because we have both $1 and $2 coins in Canada, we started with $1 for my oldest son (who is now 16, and removing his wisdom teeth will set our insurance back $1722!!), then transitioned to $2 for our youngest (who is almost 10 and just about done losing teeth now).
I hate loose teeth too, they gross me right out!
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haha… we have a few years left so this could be pretty good info for us. We have many “fairies” in our house though… the “put it together” fairy comes in to put things together that we buy that require assembly for example. This was done because my 3yo son insists on “helping” put together anything we have. We got a coat rack from ikea and there was NO way it would have ended well with him there. Dangerous and the rack would have been destroyed. So I invented the “put it together” fairy who was going to put it together for us when “we” were sleeping… 🙂
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$5 for a tooth? No way!. My 7 yr old gets $1 per tooth and is going to continue to get $1 per tooth.
$5 for a tooth?? Mine was definitely $1 and I would still give $1. I don’t think inflation exists in tooth fairy land anyway.
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Oh hell no! We are $1 a tooth here. Always. My 6yr old has his first loose tooth right now too. He’s really on the loosing the teeth thing.
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I am with you – I hate teeth! It’s a good thing that my sister has been around when all the teeth have been lost. The tooth fairy gave my son $1 for the first tooth and 50 cents for each additional tooth. I’m glad that I have one of the older kids among my friends b/c I got to set the rate to my liking before he even knew what others were doing. Some of my friends have given $20 for the first tooth – CRAZY!
$5 is exorbitant! When I was a kid I was more interested in keeping my teeth than the money from the tooth fairy, so I never put them under my pillow despite my parents’ offers.
Maybe I’m naive to plan this as I don’t have kids yet, but I don’t want to lie to them about these fictitious characters (tooth fairy, Easter bunny, Santa Claus). I can’t/don’t lie in general and I want my children to trust me when it comes to teaching them the harder-to-believe truths of the world (Christianity, cosmology, evolution, etc.).
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When I was younger it was $1, but that was a long time ago. $1 should still be fine. Maybe $2?
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My 5 year old lost her 3rd tooth last night. The first 2 were worth $1-2 each, but this one got her $5. I went high this time because it was my 3rd attempt to pull it and the first two attempts hurt and I felt bad.
You pulled her tooth?! That is my nightmare.
She’s down three teeth. I pulled each of them with my hands. No tying a string to the motorcycle or hitting her with a hammer. Just super-dad reaching in and pulling out tooth fairy gold.
I tip my hat to you, sir. That is one parenting duty I refuse to assume.