Tooth Fairy Reassures Children That Losing Teeth Isn’t Scary

Most children lose the first of their 20 baby teeth between four and seven years old. The primary teeth, sometimes called milk teeth, fall out and get replaced with 32 permanent teeth during the following six years. Children often get scared, even traumatized, when the first baby tooth gets loose and eventually falls out or gets pulled.

A unique North American fantasy called the Tooth Fairy can ease the fear many children have about losing a tooth. The myth involves children saving the tooth for the Tooth Fairy to take and exchange for money or a gift.

The dental fairy is a relatively new fable that didn’t show up until as recently as 1927. That’s when Esther Watkins Arnold wrote “The Tooth Fairy,” an essay for children about the spirit and her benevolent habit of giving money in exchange for children’s first teeth.

Losing baby teeth is a clue to children that adolescence and the struggles of puberty are coming. It’s a rite of passage and a signal to children and their parents that young bodies are at the beginning of changes. Getting money, usually for the first time, gives children a feeling of maturity and responsibility.

European and Nordic traditions acknowledge quite different methods of using children’s baby teeth. As far back as the Middle Ages, baby teeth were buried or left for mice and rats to take. It was believed that this prevented witches from getting them. Witches who possessed a tooth could allegedly cast spells and curses on the owner.

People also believed that providing baby teeth to rats and mice would ensure the child would develop adult teeth as strong as the rodents had. Rodents were part of everyday life since the vermin commonly lived inside houses.

Ancient Vikings going into battle often wore necklaces made of their children’s teeth. The necklaces gave them invincibility, they thought. You can read about other tooth fairy traditions by clicking here.

During the 1970s in the United States, a college professor named Rosemary Wells became fascinated by the positive reaction she saw among youngsters who believed in the Tooth Fairy.  Dr. Wells taught at the Northwestern University, School of Dentistry, in Chicago, IL. She gave numerous presentations at dental conventions during her teaching career about the comfort children received from the Tooth Fairy myth.

She conducted several public surveys about the Tooth Fairy. Her research found an overwhelming 95 percent of adults thought the Tooth Fairy myth was a positive force in their families. For the rest of her life, Dr. Wells kept an obsession with all aspects of the myth.  She collected items from all over the world to use in a Tooth Fairy museum located inside her home. Her husband sold the museum items after Wells died in 2000. Northwestern University’s Dental College closed the following year.

VISA Inc. published a survey in 2012 about the amount of money children received from the Tooth Fairy. The corporation showed that children received an average of $3.70 per tooth. That amount was up 23 percent from the previous year. When the tradition first started in the 1920s, children were lucky to get a few cents for one of their baby teeth. Currently children get an average of $5.00 per tooth from the Tooth Fairy.  

Information for this blog post was gathered from The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, and Wikipedia. Thanks for visiting and come back to this space later this month for a different posting. Visit my website for free view of an original piece of flash fiction at www.joevlatino.com.