The Toothfairy will be visiting our house for the first time tonight! Kaitlyn’s tooth started to get loose a few weeks ago and it just fell out. It may have helped that her Uncle Ian (who is also her dentist) visited earlier today and told her she should try and wiggle it out. Right now the biggest problem is that she is too excited to sleep!
A number of years ago I picked up a book for just this occasion: Throw Your Tooth From the Roof by Selby B. Beeler. As Kaitlyn was already in bed when it fell out tonight we will start to read it together tomorrow but I thought I would take a look at it myself first. The two most common customs are leaving it for some sort of creature to come and take it – most commonly a fairy or a mouse, or the other custom in many places is to throw it somewhere: on the roof, outside, at the sun, or even in the chicken coop. There were a couple more unique traditions. In Chile a young girl gives her tooth to her mother and she makes it into a charm that she can wear. The Aboriginal Australians put the tooth into the shoot of a pandanus plant and as the plant grow the tooth with grow too. My favourite, however is that of the Yellowknife Dene (a native Canadian tribe) where mother or grandmother puts the tooth in a tree and then the family dances around it ensuring that that the new tooth will grow in as straight as a tree. This is a very cool book to teach children about a variety of traditions.
What does your family do when a child looses a tooth? If you give money what is the going rate?
Mommy's Lessons 