Parenting Guru: Waiting for the Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy has yet to come inside our house. Santa has been here and so have a few tiny green men who left a mess and filled our potty with green pee.

She's been here, too, the Tooth Fairy, hovering just outside our windows, waiting to snatch that first missing tooth.

All around, my 6-year-old twins' gap toothed peers tell tales of missing teeth. There are stories of Tooth Fairy sightings and nearly lost teeth and it all ends the same: the kids all received money!

My boys listen with a shrug but there are dollar signs in their eyes. In their mouths, their baby teeth are locked in tight. I look on, willing those baby teeth to stay put. Don't let my babies grow up too quickly.

But the window of belief is closing.

In the line up of fictitious characters who deliver childhood dreams, some of them are fading. The Easter Bunny is fading. That annoying newbie on the scene, Elf on the Shelf, is nearly gone. Leprechauns come into view and then fade away. Only Santa stands solid, his existence rarely questioned.

A girl with wings who secretly delivers money in exchange for teeth rarely stands a chance!

Our pediatric dentist reviewed my boys' digital xrays last week and said there's a small chance one or both of them might lose a first tooth this year. "After all," she explained, "it's still early in the year."

I actually enjoy spinning a few tales for the sake of a childhood tradition. But I don't like having to spin more than a few lies; it just gets too complicated at which point I think it's time to retire the tradition. In the timeline of childhood, there's only a small window of opportunity in which to perpetuate the myth of the Tooth Fairy and the like. Then it slides into those awkward tween years when some kids are growing scruff while others still play dress up and believe in the Tooth Fairy.

So either my boys will miss out on the whole Tooth Fairy thing entirely or they will be the only Tooth Fairy believers with acne.

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Akemi Bourgeois is a Yahoo! Parenting Guru and mom to twin boys. They live in the Bay Area. She writes at Chalk and Cheese Chronicles and is the editor of Mad About Multiples. She is an editor of the newly launched Technorati Women.

Photo credit: Microsoft Clip Art