Shark Alert! Call the Dentist

My son has shark teeth: His permanent teeth are growing behind his baby teeth. Apparently this is pretty common (another SmartParenting blogger recently dealt with this too), but I admit I’m baffled. Don’t baby teeth just fall out?

Not always. It turns out there are a lot of reasons why some kids’ baby teeth are tenacious. One is genetics. Another is impatience. Some kids are more aggressive at wiggling loose teeth. In my 7-year-old’s case, he needed encouragement from the dentist to start wiggling and twisting his three loose teeth.

In fact, she pretty much gave him an ultimatum this morning.

She told him to loosen those puppies, because if they’re not gone by Halloween she's going to have to extract them. When he heard this meant getting a shot in the gums, he clamped his hands over his mouth in awe. And he’s been wiggling those teeth like crazy ever since!

Right now he looks really goofy – his front tooth is at a crazy angle, kind of jutting forward – and I’m thanking my lucky stars that school pictures aren’t scheduled for another month. I was worried that the permanent teeth coming in so far behind their normal position would mean braces, but apparently that worry is premature. Often the permanent teeth grow into their natural position without help, even if a couple of those 20 baby teeth lingered too long.

And I did take solace from learning that some kids even have three sets of teeth, meaning they will have another go-round with this. At least once these first 20 are gone – probably between ages 11 and 13 – we’ll be done with it. He’ll have most of his 32 permanent teeth and I’ll be done with my fear of sharks.

By Amy De La Hunt, Health Blogger for SmartParenting