Lose a tooth

#tooth#baby tooth#losing a tooth#gap in teeth#tooth fairy

First it wobbles a little, then it can be bent sideways, and somewhere in there comes the question of whether it will hurt. The pictures below show how a baby tooth comes out, step by step, before it actually happens.

A smiling boy shows the gap in his teeth and holds up the baby tooth that just fell out.

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Boy holding a lost tooth

A smiling boy shows the gap in his teeth and holds up the baby tooth that just fell out.

About this visual support

A body that changes on its own is hard to trust. A tooth that suddenly sits loose usually does not hurt, but it feels wrong, and a child cannot know whether the next bite will be the one that frees it. What frightens is the uncertainty, not the tooth.

Seeing the whole process in pictures removes a large part of that. Cards showing a wobbling tooth, a little blood on a napkin, the tooth in a hand, the gap and then the new tooth coming through give the event a known endpoint. Many children are reassured most by the picture of the gap, by knowing that the hole is intended and not an injury. If your child is particularly sensitive to what happens inside the mouth, it helps to go through the pictures several days before the tooth actually comes out.

One tip: decide in advance where the tooth will go, a small jar by the bed for instance, and show that jar on a card of its own. Then there is a plan for the moment itself. In Routined you can save the event in your child's day and talk about it calmly at bedtime.