January 31, 2012

Cavity Creeps

My son got his first cavity.

He has no idea what's about to happen
Now I am not going to get on here and start preaching about how important it is to brush and floss, we all know now that by now.  Most I should say, I am a terrible flosser who gets told every time I go to the dentist that my teeth are going to fall out if I continue my nonflossing ways. It's just one of those habits that I never got into, and what do they say about teaching an old dog new tricks? Woof woof, it's probably not going to happen.

So I know I should be instilling this in my kids but it's hard.  When you don't do something yourself, how can you rightfully tell your kids to do it?

So when I logged into Facebook the other day I saw an article from the Circle of Moms about cavities in pre kindergartners.  They took a five year old study from the USA Today and proclaimed it as new and said that 30% of all kids get cavities before kindergarten.  It's not really shocking considering the amount of juice and candy that kids consume.  What did shock me though was some of the arrogance in the people that commented on the article and just how many people came across as perfect parents with perfect kids.  These are who I consider the cavity creeps.

"My little Suzie brushes twice a day and flosses three times a day at Head Start." 
"My girl has been to the dentist three times with no cavities and the dentist even said she was the best patient ever."
"My Bobby has the best teeth this side of the Mississippi."

I get it, we all want to be perfect parents and EVERYONE thinks their child is perfect, but you know what, there are many reasons that kids get cavities and it's not just from lack of brushing their teeth.  Maybe I didn't brush my sons teeth well enough and I feel really bad that he did get a cavity, but I don't need people to make me feel worse like I am some lesser parent because of it.  When you think you are leading the perfect life, it's best to keep it to yourself as to not make the rest of us feel inferior.  We are not worthy of the title parent around you.


Get over yourselves people. YOU ARE NOT PERFECT.

The perfect parent makes mistakes and grows because of them.  Life is a learning experience, not just for your child, but for you.  I might have made a mistake by not brushing my sons teeth as well as I could have, then again it could be that he has my genes, who knows?  I do have over 10 cavities. I am by no means a model parent.

There was one little guy that was perfect today though.  For ten minutes I was almost glad that my son did get a cavity.  It showed me what a big kid he is getting to be and how much he's growing up. Maybe we'll learn from this who knows.

There's my big kid, what a perfect boy.

Take that you cavity creeps!


John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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4 comments:

  1. You are a terrible parent.  I floss my kids teeth until at least one, if not two teeth pop out. 
    Overly proud parents are the worst. We had some at the last kids U8 soccer game.  The other team had one amazing kid and their coach gave me a heads up to say, this kids really good - it was a nice courtesy thing.
    I told our guys, hey may be a tough game, lets play hard, blah blah blah. One of our moms said she was sitting there and they all kept making smarmy comments about how great their team was.  I really wanted to go over and say, "sorry, your team is actually terrible, every kid out there is horrible, they are all standing around picking their noses while the one kid does everything. So if he's not your kid, zip it."  And it ended up being a close and really fun game.  It was neat to see a 6 year old already that great at soccer. 
    But alas, I lined up with everyone, high fived and said good game and let the overly proud parents think their kids are really great athletes. 

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  2. We all want to be proud of our kids, but sometimes it's best kept ourselves.

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  3. Come on! You should have been a better parent.. .I mean my son is 15 months old and never had any cavities!

    You are right, no one is perfect and honestly all that really matters is that you are perfect in the eyes of your children.  They do not know that you made or are making mistakes!

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  4. All I can say is watch the sodas. When my son got 4 cavities at ONE sitting, we had to take action. Hasn't had one since and he's now 18!

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